Solvychegodsk: Salt City

Travelers in Russia soon learn to expect the unexpected, and the more one moves from the usual tourist routes, the greater the possibility for surprise.  On the fringes of the Moscow suburb of Bykovo, an elaborate pseudo-Gothic church appears like a mirage out of a littered landscape. In the sleepy provincial town of Torzhok, a remarkable seventeenth-century log church, dedicated to the Ascension, rises in a tower of octagons that still stands on its original site above the Tvertsa River.

Some of Russia’s architectural visions seem to have been abandoned, while others have been repaired for parish use by the Orthodox Church. Still others are under the protection of museum workers and their ever-dwindling resources. Indeed, every corner of the Russian provinces has its treasures, most all neglected.

In all my travels through Russia, however, no sight has seemed more improbable than the ensemble of churches built by the Stroganovs at their compound in the far northern town of Solvychegodsk. Although I had read the scholarly literature and knew of the churches’ significance, study can only go so far in preparing for the visual impact of such unique and grandiose buildings.

It is no simple matter to reach Solvychegodsk, located on the north bank of the Vychegda River, across from Kotlas, in the southeastern corner of Archangelsk Province. Kotlas itself is a grim town (pop. 70,000), struggling to emerge from the legacy of Soviet power. An important transportation center at the confluence of the Northern Dvina and Vychegda Rivers, Kotlas acquired notoriety in the Stalin era as a railroad junction and shipment point for the mining camps of the north, such as Vorkuta. (Brief but unforgettable descriptions of Kotlas during the height of the Gulag era can be found in Lev Razgon’s superb book of memoirs, True Stories.)

The railway station is still the most imposing building in Kotlas, but it is now rivaled by the recent Church of St. Stephen of Perm, built of industrial gray brick in a late 18th-century style. Next to the church on the steep right, or east, bank of the Dvina stands a blue and white baroque bell tower that had survived the destruction of an earlier church on the site. Perhaps the tower was spared as a navigation marker.

But the challenge in getting to Kotlas, not to mention Solvychegodsk, first involves crossing over to the right bank of the Dvina. This is made difficult because river trasportation has almost ceased along this southern stretch of the Dvina. Distance travel in the Russian north has usually relied on rail or river networks; maintaining roads, essential for a new economic order, involves difficulties that are particularly evident here. The area’s only long-distance road (it can hardly be called a highway) proceeds along the west bank of the Dvina, beginning at Veliky Ustyug in the south (see Russian Life, July 1997). There is one railway bridge, near Kotlas; but there are quite simply no permanent vehicular bridges across the Dvina until the road reaches Arkhangelsk, almost 600 kilometers away, at the mouth of the river, near the White Sea.

Thus, to reach Kotlas by road from Veliky Ustyug, our sturdy soviet-era minivan had to turn off the west bank road at a dirt track marked by a rusty sign and the barely legible letters, “Kotlas.” Nikolai, our valiant driver, then proceeded a few kilometers along a winding, rutted track through a sandy field, as his wife nervously repeated “Are you sure this is the right way?” When finally we caught sight of a low pontoon bridge at the river’s edge, a sigh of relief gave way to a shout of triumph.

The kilometer-long pontoon bridge, another indication of the lack of traffic on the lower Dvina, was an experience in itself. On the far side, a raised metal bar halted our crossing. Only the tollkeeper could release the lock. Clambering up the steep back to a mobile hut, we finally rousted a group of old salts from what might have been a card game. One of them, who looked like he belonged in a New England fishing port, walked unsteadily to the bridge. With payment ,we were released up the steep bank, past an empty armored personnel carrier.

At the top of the east bank, we suddenly trundled onto a decent asphalt road at the southern outskirts of Kotlas. Such are the contrasts of road travel in Russian today. Incidentally, the same bridge functions in the winter, but experienced drivers go upriver to Kotlas itself, where a seasonal road–without toll–is plowed directly across the thick ice of the Dvina.

Once on the other side of the Dvina River, one must drive several kilometers north, through the low industrial sprawl of Kotlas, until another weathered, almost illegible sign points to a makeshift ferry landing, on the south bank of the Vychegda. A ferry in this area typically consists of a small barge, capable of carrying one or two vehicles. Along the deck are benches for hikers and bikers. Power is provided by a motor launch lashed to the side of the barge.

We arrived at the landing on a chilly Sunday morning, and no one seemed quite certain that there would be a ferry at all. But after several anxious minutes, a few people with packs appeared; and shortly thereafter we could see the ferry making its way toward our bank. We carefully guided the van down the rutted path to the barge ramp.

When we offered to pay the ferrymen, they refused with gruff good humor: “Today is the National Day of the River Fleet.” And to prove the point, they turned up the radio, which blared the music of Russian riverboat chanteys. Our mood could not have been better. The ride was choppy, but it was an ideal way to see this northern river, cold and windswept like the landscape. On the north side, a primitive sandy track wound through flat fields with small marsh villages, then finally connected with a gravel road to Solvychegodsk.

Entering the town (population about 4,000), transports you back to the 19th century. One-story dwellings, usually of wood, mingle with low brick structures of the town’s few, Soviet-era enterprises and workshops. The first Russian settlements in the area probably arose in the fourteenth century, with the support of Novgorod, whose explorers and traders would have recognized the value of a site near the crossing of two major river routes: north to the White Sea and east to the Urals. The Stroganovs did not arrive until the middle of the sixteenth century, and soon thereafter the town was founded. As new trading routes led to a decline in its significance in the 18th and 19th centuries, the town became a small resort, known for its mineral waters and springs.

At the beginning of this century, there were at least twelve brick churches here, of which eight were totally destroyed in the Soviet period; two others were left in various states of damage. But the jewels in the crown, the two Stroganov “cathedrals,” still stand in proud glory – one a 16th-century gem dedicated to the Annunciation and the other an elaborately decorated 17th-century monument dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin.

The inevitable question is: Why were such grand structures built in so remote a location? The answer lies not far from the Presentation Cathedral, in a salt spring now covered with a small log tower (a replica of the earlier Stroganov stockade). The area is replete with such springs, as well as a small brackish river, the Usol, and a salt lake, the Solonikha. Indeed, Solvychegodsk means “salt of the Vychegda.” Today, we take the production of salt for granted. But it must be remembered that, in the medieval era, salt was one of the most valuable of commodities, without which life itself would have been impossible. In this part of the Russian North, the energetic, ruthless Stroganovs created a salt monopoly in the 16th century that brought them enormous wealth.

Far from being a provincial village, Solvychegodsk at that time was the center of a private empire, firmly devoted to the Muscovite tsar. To their great credit, the Stroganovs spent immense sums on the arts and crafts in the North during the 16th and 17th centuries. To this day, historians speak of a “Stroganov style” in arts ranging from music to architecture. The style appeared wherever the Stroganovs had major operations, from Solvychegodsk to Nizhny Novgorod to Perm.

The patriarch of the dynasty, Anika (or, more formally, Ioanniki) Stroganov (1497-1570), was in most respects a miser and a cruel master. It is reported that he had workers in Solvychegodsk flogged to death for minor offenses. But it was he who began the lavish Stroganov patronage of the arts.

Anika Stroganov’s wealth was incalculable. Indeed, Ivan the Terrible allowed Stroganov to maintain an army of his own and to exploit the wealth of vast areas of the Urals and Siberia, in return for which the domains of the tsar would be greatly expanded at relatively small expense. The major coup in this policy occurred around 1580, when, after several years of planning, Stroganov launched the famous expedition by the cossack leader Yermak, which defeated the Siberian Khan Kuchum near the Irtysh River. Although the Russians subsequently suffered some local setbacks (Yermak himself was killed in a surprise attack in 1585), this “conquest” opened the great expanses of Siberia for Russia.

But let us return to Solvychegodsk. Anika Stroganov’s primary contribution to Russian architecture is the Annunciation Cathedral, the last of the great masonry churches of the Russian North during the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Work on the cathedral began in 1560 and was apparently concluded in the early 1570s, although it was not to be formally consecrated until 1584.

The form of the Annunciation Cathedral is highly idiosyncratic. Instead of the four interior piers typical of such large churches, there are only two, a design that gives the building a truncated appearance from the outside. Nonetheless, the church has the five cupolas usual for major churches in the sixteenth century. The Stroganov master builders (whose identity is unknown, although evidence suggests that they came from Rostov), managed to place the main dome directly over the two massive interior piers, while the four flanking domes rest on a system of vaulted arches. A large apsidal structure for the altar serves to buttress the east wall, where the load stress is greatest.

At the northwest corner of the cathedral’s exterior gallery, there originally stood a magnificent bell tower with its own altar. The largest of its twelve bells weighed over three tons. Unfortunately, the tower gradually fell into disrepair, and it was replaced in 1819-26 by the current neoclassical bell tower, which overshadows and defaces the form of the medieval church. Few of the original Stroganov bells survived.

Another unfortunate, but typical change, involved bricking in the curved spaces between the semicircular gables at the top of the cathedral and installing a simple sloped roof. Many medieval Russian churches underwent this change in the 17th and 18th centuries, so that the roof could be more easily maintained; but it deprived these great buildings of a picturesque form echoing the shapes of the cupolas.

The Annuciation Cathedral was the first large brick structure at Solvychegodsk. All other structures, secular and sacred, had been built of logs. The contrast would have been stunning, with the brilliant walls and cupolas soaring above the surrounding log structures – including as many as twenty log churches – at the steep north bank of the Vychegda. By virtue of its stout walls, the lower part of the building served as a place of refuge and storage for especially valuable goods, such as fur pelts. Of course, the most valuable items were the church objects created with stunning mastery by the Stroganov workshops. These include embroidered fabrics, chalices, jewel-encrusted Bible covers, and enameled images. The quality of Stroganov masters became known throughout Russia.

The interior walls of the cathedral were painted with frescoes in the summer of 1600, yet they were overpainted in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly after a fire damaged the interior in 1819. Although a restoration effort since the 1970s has uncovered original frescoes on the west wall, most of the first paintings are irretrievably lost. The centerpiece of the cathedral was an elaborate, five-tiered iconostasis (icon stand), originally installed by the end of the 1570s with more than 70 icons, few of which remain. The iconostasis was rebuilt more than once in the 17th century, and its present form dates from the 1690s, although the Royal Gates leading to the altar were donated by the Stroganovs at the beginning of the 17th century.

Indeed, at just that time, Solvychegodsk underwent its most serious crisis, as a result of the Time of Troubles, a dynastic interregnum with numerous claimants to the throne in Moscow between 1598 and 1613. At first, the Stroganovs were far removed from the fighting and even profited from it; but as the threat of total Russian disintegration became greater, the Stroganovs contributed substantially in both men and money to the most stable forces. Then, in January 1613, a detachment of some 3,000 Poles and renegade cossacks surprised Solvychegodsk and managed to capture part of it by storm. Although the Stroganovs were firmly defended in their walled compound, the main trading district around the Annunciation Cathedral was sacked, as was the cathedral itself. However, with the founding of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, the Stroganovs maintained, and even expanded, many of their privileges at Solvychegodsk.

Over a century after the completion of the Annunciation Cathedral, the florid Stroganov style in church architecture reached its culmination in the Church of the Presentation of the Virgin at the Presentation Monastery, founded in 1565 by the three sons of Anika Stroganov – Yakov, Grigory and Semyon.

All of the monastery buildings, including the churches, were originally made from logs. This changed at the end of the 17th century, when work began on a magnificent new church. Its patron, Grigory Dmitrevich Stroganov, had in the 1680s acquired a dominant position in the family’s mercantile empire, and would soon figure prominently in the political and cultural changes effected by Peter the Great. Like his ancestors, Grigory had manifold interests in the applied arts, and under his patronage the Stroganov workshops continued to produce artistic objects for church use. In 1688 he commissioned a new church for the monastery that formed part of the family compound. Although the church was not consecrated until 1712, some of the lower parts of the structure were already functioning by 1691, and evidence of work on the iconostasis suggests that the basic construction was completed by 1693.

The Presentation Church is distinctive for many reasons, not the least of which is the elaborately carved limestone decoration on the brick exterior. In addition to columns, window surrounds, and scallop shells of limestone (apparently carved in Moscow), the facades were also decorated with colorful ceramic tiles. There have been some changes to the exterior, particuarly in the 18th century when the gallery – originally an open terrace – was enclosed in a brick and limestone arcade with an intricate cornice (now obscured by an awkward sloped roof).

The greatest structural achievement of the Presentation Church, however, is its interior vaulting system, which supports the roof and its five cupolas with no free-standing piers. Instead, the superstructure rests on a system of two sets of paired arches springing from supports in the center of each wall and intersecting beneath the main cupola drum. It is an amazingly bold design (again, by an unknown builder) and the first use of this system for a church so large, with openings for all five cupolas.

The effect is one of bright spaciousness, intensified by the lack of frescoes on the walls. All attention is focused on the magnificent, seven-tiered iconostasis, so luxuriantly carved as to defy the imagination. In this rare case, we know the name of the master  and the date of its creation – Grigory Ivanov in 1693. The icons themselves are unusual for their strong western characteristics. Not only are they painted on canvas, instead of the treated boards of medieval icons, but they are also done in a western style by a Stroganov painter, Stepan Narykov, who is thought to have studied abroad.

Fortunately, the icons are relatively well preserved. I first saw the interior on a gray summer day in 1996 – bringing to mind Pushkin’s witticism that a northern summer is like winter everywhere else. A return visit early last March was the exact opposite: a day so brilliant that I had difficulty seeing from the glint of the sun on a thick cover of pure snow. It was a Sunday, just after service. Some of the departing congregants invited me inside to see their church. Rarely has a small parish received such lavish premises.

As I entered the south gallery (the only part of the magnificent structure used in the winter), the deaconess motioned me toward the young priest, Father Vladimir, who was baptizing infants held by their mothers. I was reluctant to intrude, but the deaconess invited me forward. After I explained the reason for my visit, Father Vladimir asked the parents to wait, took a key, and opened the massive iron door of the south portal. The interior was intensely cold, but the winter sunlight streaming through the high windows dramatically illuminated the iconostasis. I hurriedly fumbled with the camera to take as many shots as possible (the priest himself wanted photographs of the interior), and within a few minutes I was perspiring, despite the cold.

What keeps the Stroganov churches standing as magnificent displays of Russian art? Solvychegodsk seems so small and remote, and museum funds are so limited – even for normal upkeep, not to mention major preservation problems. For example, the Annunciation Cathedral is now dangerously close to the north bank of the Vychegda, which could eventually cause a weakening of the foundation if the bank is not reinforced.

Yet the director of the Solvychegodsk Museum Complex, Alexei Bilchuk, not only showed me the buildings under his care, but also spoke of plans for expanding the museum’s activities. With government funds so restricted in Arkhangelsk province, tourism seems to be the main hope for the monuments of Solvychegodsk, which include the abandoned but still impressive Church of the Savior (17th and 18th centuries) and the large, neoclassical Pyankov mansion, built in the early 19th century. The mansion is still partially used as a sanatorium, and could be converted into a tourist hotel, if demand materializes.

There are also other points of historical interest in Solvychegodsk, most notably the Museum of Political Exile, which includes a modest log cabin where Stalin is reputed to have spent one of his many northern exiles, at the beginning of this century. Bilchuk, who is no communist, explained that the museum, with its Soviet exhibits glorifying Stalin’s revolutionary youth, is also a part of Russian history and must be preserved if people are to understand the past.

What the future holds for Solvychegodsk is another matter. Can a place so remote ever develop as a tourist center? This vast area is still covered with forest, and the location of one of Russia’s largest paper mills at nearby Koryazhma shows where the real economic power lies, despite its environmental pollution. Perhaps one day this industry will assume a role as sponsor in Solvychegodsk.

In the meantime, the problems of maintaining the treasures of Solvychegodsk are daunting, and one must applaud the spirit and determination of their curators. Like the boatmen who continue to make a hard living on these rivers, valiant museum workers have held on to protect the history of their region – and its vanished empire of the Stroganovs.