Rybinsk reservoir, hydroelectric power station and flooded mologa. Mologa: the drowned city that sometimes returns
Mologa - Russian Atlantis. A city located at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga and flooded by the Rybinsk Reservoir. The place where the city was is located in the southern part of the reservoir, five kilometers east of the island of Svyatovsky Mokh, three kilometers north of the Babiya Gora alignment - shields on concrete foundations, marking the navigable fairway running over the old bed of the Volga.
The history of this city is simply amazing and makes you think about the cruelty and short-sightedness of man. The city-paradise with houses, church domes and centuries-old history went under water by the will of people. Now, at low tide, the remains of a ghost town emerge from the water.
In the fall of 1935, the construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes began. Creating a hydroelectric power station means creating dams and flooding hectares of land. The country wanted to create one of the largest man-made seas by blocking the Sheksna and Volga rivers with dams. People began to prepare for resettlement long before construction began, but no one believed that this was possible. The indigenous population continued to live their normal lives.
Deforestation began, old temples were blown up. According to eyewitnesses, these silent witnesses of history resisted such barbarity in their own way. After the explosion, some of them, soaring upward, returned to their original place. People were forced to leave their homes. Some took them apart log by log, numbering each one to make it easier to assemble, and transported them on carts. Those who did not have time floated the logs on the water.
After filling the giant bowl Rybinsk Reservoir An eighth of the Yaroslavl land went under water and was withdrawn from economic use, including 80 thousand hectares of the best precious floodplain floodplain meadows in the Volga region, the grass of which was not inferior in quality to the grass from alpine meadows, more than 70 thousand hectares of arable land cultivated for centuries, more than 30 thousand hectares of highly productive pastures, more than 250 thousand hectares of mushroom and berry forests.
But the heaviest losses are associated with the resettlement, or more correctly, the eviction of tens of thousands of people. In total, during the construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes and the filling of the reservoir, about 800 villages and hamlets, 6 monasteries and more than 50 churches were destroyed and flooded.
Its entire historical part with three ancient temples went under water. The ancient village of Breytovo, which stood at the confluence of the legendary Sit River and Mologa, was moved to a new location. Ancient chronically known villages and temples located along the former banks of the Mologa were flooded, in particular, the village of Borisogleb - the former Kholopy Gorodok, first mentioned in the 12th century.
The most comfortable hermitage in the Yaroslavl diocese, the Yugskaya Dorofeev Hermitage, located halfway from the city of Mologa to the city of Rybinsk, went under water; the extensive complex of the Mologa Afanasyevsky Monastery, founded in the 14th century. The complex included 4 temples. The Leushinsky St. John the Baptist Convent, located between Cherepovets and Rybinsk near the Sheksna River, with a majestic five-domed cathedral, was flooded.
However, the real tragedy of the socialist reconstruction of the Upper Volga is the broken destinies of people expelled from the territory they inhabited for centuries. 130 thousand residents were forcibly evicted from the Mologo-Sheksninsky interfluve and 20 thousand from the Upper Volga valley. They left behind their lived-in homes and households created by many years of hard work, as well as the graves of their relatives and friends. Almost 27 thousand farms sank to the bottom of the Rybinsk reservoir and more than 4 thousand fell into the flood zone.
In the museum of the history of the city of Rybinsk, in the archives, a report was found from the head of the Mologsky department of Volgolag, state security lieutenant Sklyarov, to the head of Volgostroy - Volgolag of the NKVD of the USSR, Major Zhurin. This is the first document confirming the presence of people in the territories that, through a short time became the bottom of the world's largest reservoir.
On April 13, 1941, at a construction site in Perebory, near Rybinsk, the last opening of the dam was blocked, and the flood waters of the Volga, Sheskna and Mologa, having encountered an insurmountable obstacle on their way, began to overflow their banks, spill onto the floodplain, getting closer and closer every day approaching the city of Mologa and flooding the Mologo-Sheksna interfluve. Together with Mologa, about 700 villages and hamlets, hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile arable land, famous water meadows, pastures, green oak groves, forests, monuments of antiquity, culture, and the way of life of our distant ancestors went under water.
On April 14, the waters of the Sheksna, Volga and Mologa encountered an obstacle on their way and overflowed their banks, flooding the Mologo-Kizhin interfluve. 294 people, not wanting to leave their homes, chained themselves to their houses and went under water along with their city. Several dozen more were forcibly removed from the flooded area. Thus, the large and beautiful city-paradise of Mologa with almost eight centuries of history went under water, and with it several dozen villages, arable lands, meadows, forests, six monasteries, 50 temples and almost three hundred living people. The city of Mologa became a ghost town.
Kalyazinskaya bell tower
At the same time, the Kalyazin bell tower was flooded. The bell tower was built in 1800 at the St. Nicholas Cathedral (erected in 1694) of the former St. Nicholas Zhabensky Monastery in the style of classicism; had five tiers, a dome with a dome and a spire. The bell tower (height 74.5 m) was built in 6 years. It had 12 bells. The largest bell, weighing 1,038 pounds, was cast in 1895 with money from the monastery in honor of the accession to the throne of Nicholas II.
By the 1940s, the Volgostroy project was approved, which began in the 1920s. This project provided for the artificial expansion of the Volga River and the creation of hydroelectric power stations in its waters. When the Uglich reservoir was created, the old part of Kalyazin found itself in a flood zone; the cathedral was dismantled, and the bell tower was left as a lighthouse. Immediately, as loaded barges began to sail along the Volga, it became clear that it was impossible to navigate by other signs, since there are very sharp turn rivers. In archival documents of that time, the bell tower appears as a lighthouse.
In Soviet times, there was talk that the bell tower should be demolished. They said that it would be advisable to dismantle it, since it tilted a little due to the fragility of the foundation, but at the end of the 80s of the 20th century, the foundation of the bell tower was strengthened, and an artificial island with a pier for boats was created around it. On May 22, 2007, a Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the bell tower.
In April 2014, it found itself surrounded by land due to a drop in the water level in the reservoir, which was caused by a winter with little snow and a malfunction of the dams. Currently, the flooded bell tower is perhaps the main symbol of Kalyazin and attracts many tourists. In the summer, regular prayer services are held at the bell tower. In the winter, it is not always possible to get close to it, and in the summer, during the Upper Volga religious procession, this is where the Upper Volga procession ends procession, which begins at the source of the Volga in Ostashkov. Here he stops to perform a prayer service.
Flooded Church of the Nativity
The flooded Church of the Nativity, built in 1780. The only surviving building of the village of Krokhino, which was flooded in 1962. Enthusiasts are trying to preserve and restore this unique church. Those who care can provide all possible assistance.
The village of Krokhinskaya was first mentioned in 1426 in the scribe book of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery. It was located on the site of the former city of Beloozero and repeated its topography. It belonged to a certain boyar son Gavrila Laptev. After the death of Gavrila, who left no heirs, in 1434 Krokhinskaya was granted to the Mozhaisk Prince Ivan Andreevich Ferapontov Monastery. Due to its location, the village became important shopping center. Probably, back in the 15th century, Krokhino had its own church.
The brick, whitewashed, two-story church was built in 1788 and is designed in the late regional Baroque style. The composition “ship” is made up of a single-domed temple of the “octagon on a quadrangle” type, a four-tiered bell tower and a refectory connecting them. The church was the architectural dominant of the entire surrounding landscape.
In September 1935, the USSR decided to build the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. According to the project, the water level was supposed to rise by 98 meters. But already on January 1, 1937, the project was revised and a decision was made to increase the level to 102 meters. This made it possible to increase the capacity of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station by one and a half times, but at the same time, the area of flooded land should have almost doubled.
The grandiose construction threatened the existence of the city of Mologa and hundreds of villages in the Yaroslavl region. When the residents of Mologa were informed that their small homeland would soon cease to exist and disappear under water, no one could even believe it. At that time, the regional center of Mologa had about 7,000 inhabitants.
The resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937. Most of the Mologans were sent to the village of Slip, not far from Rybinsk. But some residents stubbornly refused to leave their homes. The NKVD archives contained a report that 294 people did not want to voluntarily leave their homes, and some of them even threatened to chain themselves with padlocks. Soviet propaganda explained this " mental disorder backward elements." According to the instructions of the NKVD, methods of force were used against them.
On April 13, 1941, the last gate of the dam was closed near Rybinsk, and water poured into the floodplain. The city of Mologa, whose history spanned almost 8 centuries, went under water. Its entire territory was flooded in 1947, only the heads of some churches remained above the water, but a few years later they disappeared under water.
Apart from Mologa, about 700 villages and hamlets were flooded, with a population of about 130,000 people. All of them were resettled to other regions.
But sometimes “Russian Atlantis” can be seen. The water level in the Rybinsk Reservoir fluctuates frequently, and a flooded city appears above the surface of the Volga. You can see preserved churches and brick houses.
The descendants of those who had to leave their hometown do not forget about their roots. Back in the 60s, former residents of Mologa began to hold meetings. And since 1972, on the second Saturday of August, Mologans organize a boat trip to the area of the flooded city.
In 1992-93, during a drop in the water level in the reservoir, local historians organized an expedition to the city. Interesting materials on the history of Mologa were collected. Many of them became exhibits of the Museum of the Mologsky Region, opened in 1995 in Rybinsk.
Scheme of the Rybinsk Reservoir. River beds before flooding are marked in dark blue.
When flooded with water in 1941–47 in the lake part of the Rybinsk reservoir, three monastic complexes disappeared under water, including the Leushinsky convent, which was patronized by the holy righteous John of Kronstadt (photo by Prokudin-Gorsky).
Up to 700 nuns lived in the monastery.
The Leushinsky monastery was not blown up, and after the flooding its walls rose above the water for several years until they collapsed from waves and ice drifts. Photo from the 50s.
Today, the shore of the “Rybinsk Sea” in some places really looks like a resort.
The receding water exposed wide strips of sandy beaches.
Due to the drop in level, stones, pieces of foundations and islands of earth came out of the water here and there. In some places, right in the middle big water, you can walk, the water is no higher than your knees.
South of the city Mologi. The remains of the city look strange in the middle of flat water, and this strangeness attracts tourists here.
Remains of the pier south of Mologa.
The shoals and rocks south of Mologa are marked with a lighthouse.
If you climb onto the lighthouse, you can see the muddy silhouettes of the foundations under the water.
Almost nothing has been left of Mologa itself for a long time. Before the flooding, everything that could be was dismantled and taken away; what couldn’t was blown up and burned; the rest of the work was done by waves and sand.
On the desert shallows you can only find seagulls, seaweed and driftwood covered with shells.
Plan of the city of Mologa.
Before the city was ordered to be “abolished,” it had about 5 thousand inhabitants (up to 7 in winter) and about 900 residential buildings, about 200 shops and shops. The city had two cathedrals and three churches. In the north, not far from the city, stood the Kirillo-Afanasyevsky Convent. The monastery ensemble consisted of a dozen buildings, including a free hospital, pharmacy and school. Near the monastery in the village of Borok, the future Archimandrite Pavel Gruzdev, revered by many as an elder, was born and raised.
Photo of the Mologa embankment during the white nights.
As of 1914, Mologa had two gymnasiums, a secondary school, a hospital with 35 beds, an outpatient clinic, a pharmacy, a cinema, then called “Illusion”, two public libraries, a post and telegraph office, an amateur stadium, an orphanage and two almshouses.
Yaroslavskaya street Mologi.
Mologa fire station, built in 1870 according to the design of A.M. Dostoevsky, brother of the great writer.
Residents of Mologa.
Preparing for flooding. City residents remove their property on trucks and convoys.
The settlers recalled that during the flooding, frightened animals could be seen on the islands formed in the middle of the water, and out of pity, people made rafts for them and felled trees to build a bridge “to the mainland.”
The houses were rolled out onto logs, piled into rafts, and floated down the river to a new location.
The press of that time described numerous cases of “red tape and confusion, reaching the point of obvious mockery” during relocation. Thus, “Citizen Vasilyev, having received a plot of land, planted apple trees on it and built a barn, and after a while he learned that the plot of land was declared unsuitable and he was given a new one, on the other side of the city.”
And citizen Matveevskaya received a plot in one place, and her house is being built in another. Citizen Potapov was driven from site to site and was eventually returned to his old one. “The dismantling and reassembly of houses is happening extremely slowly, the workforce is not organized, the foremen are drinking, and the construction management is trying not to notice these disgraces,” reports an unknown newspaper from the Mologa Museum exposition. Houses lay in water for several months, the wood became damp, pests infested it, and some of the logs could be lost.
On the site of the central square of Mologa.
There is a photograph of a document circulating on the Internet called “Report to the head of Volgostroy-Volgolag of the NKVD of the USSR, state security major comrade. Zhurin, written by the head of the Mologsky department of the Volgolag camp camp, state security lieutenant Sklyarov." This document is even quoted Rossiyskaya Gazeta in an article about Mologa. The document says that 294 people committed suicide during the flooding:
“In addition to the report I submitted earlier, I report that the number of citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when the reservoir was filled was 294 people. Absolutely all of these people had previously suffered from a nervous health disorder, so the total number of citizens who died during the flooding of the city of Mologa and the villages of the region of the same name remained the same - 294 people. Among them were those who firmly attached themselves with locks, having previously wrapped themselves around blind objects. Methods of force were applied to some of them, according to the instructions of the NKVD of the USSR".
However, such a document does not appear in the archives of the Rybinsk Museum. And Mologda resident Nikolai Novotelnov, an eyewitness of the flooding, completely doubts the plausibility of this data.
“When Mologa was flooded, the resettlement was completed, and there was no one in the houses. So there was no one to go ashore and cry,” recalls Nikolai Novotelnov. – In the spring of 1940, the dam doors in Rybinsk were closed, and the water gradually began to rise. In the spring of 1941 we came here and walked the streets. The brick houses were still standing and the streets were walkable. Mologa was flooded for 6 years. Only in 1946 was the 102nd mark passed, that is, the Rybinsk Reservoir was completely filled.”.
Mologzhanin Nikolai Mikhailovich Novotelnov on the ruins of his city. Now Nikolai Novotelnov is 90 years old, and at the time of the flooding he was 15, he is one of the few surviving eyewitnesses of the resettlement.
Walkers were selected for resettlement in the villages; they looked for suitable places and offered them to residents. Mologa was assigned a place on a slip in the city of Rybinsk.
There were no adult men in the family - the father was condemned as an enemy of the people, and Nikolai's brother served in the army. The house was dismantled by Volgolag prisoners, and they reassembled it on the outskirts of Rybinsk in the middle of the forest on stumps instead of a foundation. Several logs were lost during transportation.
In winter, the temperature in the house was minus and the potatoes froze. Kolya and his mother spent several more years plugging the holes and insulating the house on their own, so they had to uproot the forest to plant a vegetable garden. Accustomed to water meadows livestock, according to the memoirs of Nikolai Novotelnov, almost all the settlers died.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Novotelnov
– What did people say about it then? Was the flooding worth the result?
– There was a lot of propaganda. People were encouraged that this was necessary for the people, necessary for industry and transport. Before this, the Volga was not navigable. We crossed the Volga on foot in August-September. Steamboats sailed only from Rybinsk to Mologa. And further along Mologa to Vesyegonsk. The rivers dried up, and all navigation along them ceased. Industry needed energy, this is also a positive factor. But if you look from the perspective of today, it turns out that all this could not have been done, it was not economically feasible.
Epiphany Cathedral, photo from the beginning of the twentieth century.
While we have heard a lot about Atlantis, which was absorbed by the water element, few know about the Russian city of Mologa. Despite the fact that the latter can even be seen: twice a year the level of the Rybinsk reservoir drops - and this ghost town appears.
Since time immemorial, this place has been called the fabulous interfluve. Nature itself took care to make the vast space at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga not only very beautiful, but also abundant.
In the spring, water flooded the meadows, supplying them with moisture for the whole summer and bringing nutritious silt - lush grass grew. It is not surprising that the cows gave wonderful milk, from which they obtained the best butter in Russia and amazing-tasting cheese. The saying “Rivers of milk and banks of cheese” is about Mologa.
The navigable Mologa River is wide at the mouth (over 250 m), with crystal clean water- was famous throughout Russia for its fish: sterlet, sturgeon and other valuable varieties. It was local fishermen who were the main suppliers to the imperial table. By the way, this circumstance played a decisive role in the appearance in 1777 of the decree of Catherine II granting Mologa the status of a city. Although at that time there were only about 300 households there.
The favorable climate (even epidemics avoided the region), convenient transport links and the fact that wars did not reach Mologa - all this contributed to the prosperity of the city until the beginning of the 20th century. Both economically (there were 12 factories in the city) and socially.
By 1900, with a population of seven thousand, Mologa had a gymnasium and eight more educational institutions, three libraries, as well as a cinema, a bank, a post office with a telegraph, a zemstvo hospital and a city hospital.
A memorial sign on the site where the Epiphany Cathedral stood. Every year on the second Saturday of August, Mologans meet at this sign.
Hard Times Civil War The years 1917-1922 only partially affected the city: the new government also needed products and their processing, which provided employment for the population. In 1931, a machine and tractor station and a seed-growing collective farm were organized in Mologa, and a technical school was opened.
A year later, an industrial complex appeared, combining a power plant, a starch and oil mill, and a mill. There were already over 900 houses in the city, and 200 shops and shops were trading.
Everything changed when the country was swept by a wave of electrification: the number of coveted megawatts became the main goal, to achieve which all means were good.
FATAL 4 METERS
Today, every now and then you hear about rising sea levels and the threat of flooding of coastal cities, and even countries. Such horror stories are perceived somehow detachedly: they say, it can happen, but it will never happen. At least not in our lifetime. And in general, it’s hard to imagine this rise of water by several meters...
In 1935, residents of Mologa - then the regional center of the Yaroslavl region - initially also did not imagine the full extent of the impending danger. Although, of course, they were informed of the decree of the USSR government issued in September on the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir. But the water rise level in the project was stated as 98 m, and the city of Mologa was located at an altitude of 100 m - safety was guaranteed.
But then, without much fuss, the designers, at the suggestion of economists, made an amendment. According to their calculations, if the water level is raised by only 4 m - from 98 to 102, then the power of the Rybinsk hydroelectric station under construction will increase from 220 to 340 MW. Even the fact that the flooded area doubled at the same time did not stop it. Momentary gain decided the fate of Mologa and hundreds of nearby villages.
However, the alarm bell sounded back in 1929 in the famous Afanasyevsky Monastery, founded in the 15th century. It was adjacent to Molota and was rightfully considered one of the most magnificent monuments of Russian Orthodox architecture.
In addition to the four churches, the monastery also kept a miraculous relic - a copy of the Tikhvin icon Mother of God. It was with her that the first Mologa prince Mikhail Davidovich arrived in his patrimony in 1321 - he inherited the lands after the death of his father, the Yaroslavl prince David.
So, in 1929, the authorities removed the icon from the monastery and transferred it to the Mologa District Museum. The clergy regarded this as a bad omen. And indeed, the Afanasyevsky Monastery was soon transformed into a labor commune - the last service took place here on January 3, 1930.
Just a few months later, the icon was requisitioned from the museum - for representatives of the new government it was now listed only as “an object containing non-ferrous metal.” Since then, traces of the relic have been lost, and Mologa was left without holy patronage. And the disaster was not long in coming...
CHOICE FOR DISAGREEMENTS
Residents of Mologa wrote letters to various authorities asking them to lower the water level and leave the city, and presented their arguments, including economic ones. In vain!
Moreover, in the fall of 1936, a deliberately impossible order was received from Moscow: to resettle 60% of the Mologans before the new year. It was still possible to survive the winter, but in the spring the townspeople began to be taken out, and the process lasted for four years until the flooding began in April 1941.
In total, according to the construction plan for the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes, over 130 thousand residents were forcibly evicted from the Mologo-Sheksninsky interfluve. In addition to Mologa, they lived in 700 villages and hamlets. Most of them were sent to Rybinsk and neighboring areas of the region, and the most qualified specialists were sent to Yaroslavl, Leningrad and Moscow. Those who actively resisted and campaigned to stay were exiled to Volgolag - a huge construction site needed workers.
And yet there were those who stood their ground and did not leave Mologa. In the report, the head of the local branch of the Volgolag camp, state security lieutenant Sklyarov, reported to his superiors that the number of “citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when filling the reservoir was 294 people...
Among them were those who firmly attached themselves with locks... to solid objects.” The authorities officially recognized such people as suffering nervous disorders, and that’s the end of it: they died in the flooding.
Sappers blew up tall buildings - this was an obstacle to future shipping. The Epiphany Cathedral survived the first explosion; explosives had to be planted four more times to turn the recalcitrant Orthodox monument into ruins.
ERASE FROM BIOGRAPHY
Subsequently, the very mention of Mologa was banned - as if such a region did not exist. The reservoir reached its design mark of 102 m only in 1947, and before that the city was slowly disappearing under water.
There were several cases when resettled Mologans came to the shore of the Rybinsk Reservoir and entire families lost their lives - they committed suicide, unable to bear the separation from their small homeland.
Only 20 years later were Mologans able to organize meetings of fellow countrymen - the first took place in 1960 near Leningrad.
Houses were rolled out onto logs, piled into rafts, and floated down the river to a new location.
In 1972, the level of the Rybinsk reservoir dropped noticeably - finally there was an opportunity to walk along Mologa. Several families of Mologans who arrived identified their streets by sawn down trees and telegraph poles, found the foundations of houses, and in the cemetery, by tombstones, the burials of relatives.
Soon after this, a meeting of Mologans took place in Rybinsk, which became an annual event, attracting fellow countrymen from other regions of Russia and neighboring countries.
...Twice a year flowers appear at the Mologa city cemetery - they are brought by people whose relatives, by the will of fate, found themselves buried not only in the ground, but also under a layer of water. There is also a homemade stele with the inscription: “Forgive me, the city of Mologa.” Below - “14 m”: this is maximum level water over the ruins of a ghost town. Descendants keep the memory of their small homeland, which means Mologa is still alive...
Perhaps the statement that a Russian person most often lives with his past rather than with his present or future is not so far from the truth, a member of the Union of Writers of Russia once wrote Boris Sudarushkin in his magazine "Rus". He wrote this in connection with the eternal theme for Rybinsk of the flooding of Mologa during the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir. It seems that everything that can be said about the era of the great construction projects of communism has been said about the death of Mologa. Russian Atlantis, ghost town, dead city, the hidden page of Russian tragedy - no matter how Mologa is called in literature. Despite the wide popularity of this story, there are no clear assessments of the events of the first half of the twentieth century. And obviously it won't.
Story
In the local history monograph Peter of Crete“Our region. Yaroslavl province. Experience of Rodnoverie”, published in 1907, tells about the history of Mologa:
“As a populated place, Mologa was mentioned in the 13th century... Germans, Lithuanians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Italians came here to trade... Visiting traders exchanged their goods here for raw goods, mainly for furs. Even at the end of the 16th century, the fair at Serf Town was considered the most important in Russia; later its value began to decline. At the beginning of the 17th century, the inhabitants of Mologa suffered a lot from the Cossacks, Poles and Lithuanians (especially in 1609 and 1617).”
The time of settlement of the area where the city of Mologa was located is unknown. In chronicles, mention of the Mologa River first appears in 1149, when the Grand Duke of Kiev Izyaslav Mstislavich, fighting with the Prince of Suzdal and Rostov Yuri Dolgoruky, burned all the villages along the Volga up to Mologa. In 1321, the Molozhsk Principality appeared, which during the reign of Ivan III became part of the Moscow Principality.
From the inventory compiled between 1676 and 1678 by steward Samarin and clerk Rusinov, it follows that Mologa was at that time a palace settlement, it had 125 households, including 12 belonging to fishermen who, together with the fishermen of Rybnaya Sloboda, fished in the Volga and Mologa red fish, delivering annually to the royal table three sturgeon, 10 white fish, and 100 sterlet.
At the end of the 1760s, Mologa belonged to the Uglich province of the Moscow province, had a town hall, two stone and one wooden parish churches, and 289 wooden houses. In 1777, the ancient palace settlement of Mologa received the status of a district town and was included in the Yaroslavl province. The coat of arms of the city of Mologa was approved on July 20, 1778. In the complete collection of laws it is described as follows: “ Shield in a silver field; part three of this shield contains the coat of arms of the Yaroslavl governorship (on hind legs bear with an ax); in two parts of that shield, part of an earthen rampart is shown in an azure field; it is trimmed with a silver border or white stone».
At the end of the 19th century, Mologa was a small town that came to life during the loading of ships, and then plunged into the rather boring life of county towns. From Mologa began the Tikhvin water system, one of three connecting the Caspian and Baltic seas. More than 300 ships were loaded with grain and other goods annually at the city pier, and almost the same number of ships were unloaded.
There were 11 factories in Mologa, including a distillery, a bone mill, a glue and brick factory, and a plant for the production of berry extracts. There was a monastery, several churches, a treasury, a bank, a telegraph office, a post office and a cinema here.
There were three libraries in the city, nine educational institutions, two parish schools - one for boys, the other for girls, the Alexander Orphanage, one of the first gymnastics schools in Russia, which taught bowling, fencing, cycling, and carpentry.
Soviet power was established in the city on December 15, 1917. Supporters of the Provisional Government did not particularly resist, so no blood was shed.
In 1931, a machine and tractor station was organized in Mologa. The following year, a zonal seed-growing station and industrial plant were opened. In the 1930s, the city had more than 900 houses, about a hundred of them made of stone, and almost seven thousand people lived here.
The Mologans were announced about the upcoming resettlement in the fall of 1936. The authorities decided to resettle more than half of the city's residents and remove their homes by the end of the year. It was not possible to fulfill the plan - the resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted four years.
On the lands condemned to flooding, there were 408 collective farms, 46 rural hospitals, 224 schools, and 258 industrial enterprises.
According to official data, about 300 people refused to leave their homes during the resettlement. In the report of the head of the Mologsky department of the Volgolag camp camp, state security lieutenant Sklyarov: “In addition to the report I previously submitted, I report that the citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when filling the reservoir are 294 people...”
The city finally disappeared in 1947 when the filling of the Rybinsk Reservoir was completed.
Big Volga
On April 1, 1936, an interview with the head of Volgostroy was published in the newspaper “Severny Rabochiy” under the heading “Big Volga” Yakov Rapoport. The interview is accompanied by the following editorial introduction:
“There are no fortresses that the Bolsheviks could not take. How long ago did the construction of Dneprostroy, Kuznetskstroy, the Moscow metro and many other, no less grandiose problems seem like a dream? The dream has come true. Dozens of industrial giants have entered into operation at existing enterprises. Under the leadership of the great architect of socialism - Comrade Stalin - our country is solving enormous problems. One of these problems is the Big Volga.”
Rapoport explained what the Big Volga is: to connect the Volga route with the Dnieper through the Oka and tributaries of the Dnieper, to connect the Volga with the Black, Azov and Caspian seas through a single waterway: “ Connecting rivers and seas, the Bolsheviks' hands reach the Arctic Ocean. The White Sea Canal plus the expanded Mariinskaya system, plus the Volga-Moscow Canal will make it possible to connect the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean with the southern seas».
Almost all of these promises were fulfilled. Rapoport kept silent about only one thing - that all this gigantic work was carried out by the labor of thousands of Gulag prisoners.
The most interesting thing in Rapoport’s interview is the information about the first option for building a power plant on the Volga near Yaroslavl, which included flooding the city of Uglich. The second option, with the flooding of Mologa, was sent by a group of young engineers personally to Stalin. By that time, all calculations for the Yaroslavl hydroelectric power station were completed, and construction had already begun. It is not difficult to imagine how the authors of the second option felt while waiting for a response from the Kremlin - at that time, such an initiative could easily have landed them in the category of enemies of the people. However, this time it happened differently. Here's how Rapoport talked about it:
"With the usual Comrade Stalin sensitivity, he was attentive to the project of young engineers. On his initiative, a secondary examination was carried out, which confirmed the validity and enormous advantage of the new project.”
With all his sympathy for the fate of Mologa, Sudarushkin believes that the flooding of Uglich would have had even more tragic consequences for the history and culture of Russia. But that’s not all - according to the first project, flooding threatened Rybinsk too! At least this is what Rapoport, who had a good understanding of the situation at that time, spoke about.
More real story the beginning of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, however, also without mentioning the thousands of Volgolag prisoners, presented in the book “ Man-made sea» Seraphim Tachalov, who personally participated in the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex: “I still remember how rafts of settlers floated along Mologa, Sheksna and Yana. On the rafts are household utensils, livestock, huts.” And then the author cites a conversation with a displaced woman: “After all, happiness, my dear, lives not only in the parental home. I think it won’t be any worse in the new place. Our place is unenviable - every spring there were floods. The underground is in water almost all the time, so there is nowhere to store supplies. If you need to go to the store, get on the boat. The cattle moo in povet. They didn’t take their eyes off the guys - they were about to drown... And the harvest itself was two or three, there wasn’t enough of our own bread until Easter. You fight and fight, but it’s of little use.”
Watery grave
In 1991, the Upper Volga book publishing house, where The Man-Made Sea appeared ten years earlier, published the book Yuri Nesterov « Mologa - memory and pain", in which the history of the Rybinsk Reservoir is presented in a tragic light.
On next year After the publication of the book, the author died; an obituary signed by the initiative group of the Mologa community was published in the newspaper “Rybinskiye Izvestia” on June 6, 1992, under the heading “Chronicle of the Mologa Region”. It said, in particular, that Yuri Aleksandrovich Nesterov was a career military man, a reserve colonel. “In 1985, I began to study the history of my hometown of Mologa and the entire Moloy-Sheksninsky interfluve. He was especially interested in issues of resettlement, everyday life and life of Mologans in new places.”
Yuri Nesterov was one of the initiators of the creation of the Mologa Museum in Rybinsk. The book “Mologa - Memory and Pain” was published on the 50th anniversary of the flooding of his hometown by the Rybinsk Reservoir. It contains documents and the following figures: about 150 thousand Volgolag prisoners worked on the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex; one hundred people a day died from disease, hunger and “hellish” working conditions. “Today on the site of Mologa there is a huge watery grave,” wrote Yu.A. Nesterov. “But maybe, like the legendary Kitezh, it will reveal itself to people before the Last Judgment Seat of Christ?” After all, the Last Judgment has been going on for a long time, because our life is the Last Judgment itself. Nowadays, science often refutes the correctness of previous decisions, and if the low energy output of the Rybinsk cascade puts lowering the level of the reservoir or its descent on the agenda, then Mologa will indeed be able to rise out of the water again someday.”
On August 12, 1995, the museum of the city of Mologa was inaugurated in Rybinsk - a tiny island of the disappeared culture of Russian Atlantis.
Russian Pompeii
“Forest birds and animals are retreating step by step to higher places and hillocks. But water from the flanks and rear bypasses the fugitives. Mice, hedgehogs, stoats, foxes, hares and even moose are driven by the water to the tops of the hillocks and try to escape by swimming or on the floating logs, peaks and branches left from cutting down the forest.
Many forest giant moose more than once found themselves in spring floods and floods of Mologa and Sheksna and usually swam safely to the shores or stopped in shallow places until the flood waters subsided. But now the animals cannot overcome the flood of unprecedented size in the flooded area.
Many moose, having stopped trying to escape by swimming, stand up to their bellies in the water in shallower places and wait in vain for the usual decline in water. Some of the animals are saved on rafts and races prepared for rafting, living for several weeks. Hungry moose have eaten all the bark from the logs of the rafts and, realizing the hopelessness of their situation, allow people in boats to come within 10-15 steps..."
...As a result of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, 80 thousand hectares of floodplain meadows, 70 thousand hectares of arable land, more than 30 thousand hectares of highly productive pastures, and more than 250 thousand hectares of forests went under water. 633 villages and the ancient city of Mologa, the ancient estates of the Volkonskys, Kurakins, Azancheevs, Glebovs, the Ilovna estate, which belonged to the Musin-Pushkins, the Yugskaya Dorofeev Hermitage, three monasteries, and several dozen churches disappeared. Some churches were blown up before the flooding, others were abandoned, and they were gradually destroyed under the influence of water, ice and winds, serving as beacons for ships and a resting place for birds. The bell tower of the Church of St. John Chrysostom was the last to collapse in 1997.
130 thousand people were resettled from the area subject to flooding.
From the essay Vladimir Grechukhin « In the capital of Russian Atlantis»:
“We have been walking back for a long time through the dark sand and silt desert. We don’t talk much, it’s still to come. Each of us is still in Mologa. Both in thought and feeling. And the realization quietly comes that the meeting with the murdered City, it seems, not only enveloped him in misfortune, but also endowed him with a certain sad and proud strength. That there is something in these “Russian Pompeii” that stopped your thoughts at the last edge before bitter powerlessness, and enlightened your gaze and strengthened them, like a prayer. So what touched you so bitterly and beneficially in the murdered City? And you realize in shock that, probably, his Soul. That the City was killed, but the Soul seems to be alive. And perhaps, in this place of conciliar Russian suffering, Russia has found another holy place of Russian new martyrdom? And is it worth looking for more important holy places in the Yaroslavl region, if there is an amazing case here when an entire city was torn out from its native life and, without guilt, was punished with eternal exile? Is it not because of the awareness of the holiness of the deserted hills of Mologa that the feeling of high and proud sad strength does not leave me? Is it not from her that the soul becomes so passionately thoughtful? Isn’t it because of her that after the sermon you feel sadly bright?”
November 6 at 17.20 on Channel One - premiere of a film about the mysterious history of the flooded Russian city of Mologa
In the Yaroslavl region, on the Rybinsk reservoir, buildings appeared from the water ancient city Mologa, which was flooded in 1940 during the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Now there is low water in the region, the water has gone and exposed entire streets: the foundations of houses, the walls of churches and other city buildings are visible.
These days Mologa would celebrate its anniversary - 865 years.
The city of Mologa in the Yaroslavl region, which disappeared from the face of the earth more than 50 years ago, again appeared above the surface of the water as a result of low water levels that came to the region, ITAR-TASS reports. It was flooded in 1940 during the construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Rybinsk Reservoir.
Former residents of the city came to the banks of the reservoir to watch unusual phenomenon. They said that the foundations of houses and the outlines of streets appeared from the water. Mologans are going to visit their former houses. Their children and grandchildren plan to sail on the Moskovsky-7 motor ship to the ruins of the city to walk around their native land.
“We go to visit the flooded city every year. Usually we put flowers and wreaths in the water, and the priests serve a prayer service on the ship, but this year there is unique opportunity set foot on land,” said Valentin Blatov, chairman of the public organization “Community of Mologans.”
The city of Mologa in the Yaroslavl region is called the “Russian Atlantis” and the “Yaroslavl city of Kitezh”. If it had not been sunk in 1941, it would now be 865 years old. The city was located 32 km from Rybinsk and 120 km from Yaroslavl at the confluence of the Mologa and Volga rivers. From the 15th to the end of the 19th century, Mologa was a major trading center, with a population of 5,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century.
On September 14, 1935, a decision was made to begin construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes, as a result of which the city found itself in a flood zone. Initially, it was planned to raise the water level to 98 meters above sea level, but then the figure increased to 102 meters, since this increased the power of the hydroelectric power station from 200 megawatts to 330. And the city had to be flooded... The city was flooded on April 13, 1941.
Incredibly lush grass grew in the fields of Mologa because during the spring flood the rivers merged into a huge floodplain and unusually nutritious silt remained in the meadows. The cows ate the grass that grew on it and produced the most delicious milk in Russia, from which they produced butter. They don’t get this kind of oil now, despite all the ultras modern technologies. There is simply no more Molog nature.
In September 1935, the USSR government adopted a decree on the start of construction of the Russian Sea - the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it, 700 villages and the city of Mologa.
At the time of liquidation the city lived full life, it housed 6 cathedrals and churches, 9 educational institutions, plants and factories.
On April 13, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked. The waters of the Volga, Sheksna and Mologa began to overflow their banks and flood the territory.
The tallest buildings in the city and churches were razed to the ground. When the city began to be ravaged, the residents were not even explained what would happen to them. They could only watch as Mologa-paradise was turned into hell.
Prisoners were brought in to work, who worked day and night, demolishing the city and building a waterworks. Prisoners died in hundreds. They were not buried, but simply stored and buried in common pits on the future seabed. In this nightmare, residents were told to urgently pack up, take only the essentials and go for resettlement.
Then the worst thing began. 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes. Knowing this, the builders began flooding. The rest were forcibly taken away.
After some time, a wave of suicides began among former Mologans. Whole families and one by one they came to the banks of the reservoir to drown themselves. Rumors spread about mass suicides, which reached Moscow. It was decided to evict the remaining Mologans to the north of the country, and remove the city of Mologa from the list of ever existing ones. Mentioning it, especially as a place of birth, was followed by arrest and prison. They tried to forcefully turn the city into a myth.
GHOST TOWN
But Mologa was not destined to become the City of Kitezh or the Russian Atlantis, which forever plunged into the abyss of water. Her fate is worse. The depths at which the city is located, in accordance with dry engineering terminology, are called “vanishingly small.” The level of the reservoir fluctuates, and approximately once every two years Mologa emerges from the water. Street paving, house foundations, and a cemetery with tombstones are exposed. And the Mologans come: to sit on the ruins of their home, to visit their father’s graves. For every “low-water” year, the ghost town pays its price: during the spring ice drift, the ice, like a grater, scrapes along the bottom in shallow water and takes with it material evidence of past life...
REPENTANCE CHAPEL
A unique museum of the flooded region was created in Rybinsk.
Now on the remaining Molog lands there are the Breitovsky and Nekouzsky districts of the Yaroslavl region. It was here, in the ancient village of Breytovo, located at the confluence of the Sit River into the Rybinsk Reservoir, that a popular initiative arose to build a penitential chapel in memory of all the flooded monasteries and temples resting under the waters of the man-made sea. This ancient village itself revealed the image of the tragedy of the Russian interfluve. Once in the flood zone, it was artificially moved to a new location, while historical buildings and temples remained at the bottom.
In November 2003, the first monument to the victims of the flooded Mologsky district appeared. This is a chapel built exclusively with human donations on the shore of the Rybinsk Reservoir, in Breytovo. This is the memory of those who did not want to leave their small homeland and went under water along with Mologa and the flooded villages. This is also the memory of all those who died during the construction of the hydroelectric power station. The chapel was named “Our Lady of the Waters.”
Penitential chapel in Breytovo
Icon of the Mother of God “I am with you, and no one else is against you” or Leushinskaya
Yaroslavl Archbishop Kirill blessed this chapel to dedicate to the Mother of God “I am with you, and no one else is against you,” the icon that became a symbol of flooded Rus', and to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the patron saint of swimmers. Therefore, the chapel also received another name: Theotokos-Nikolskaya.