March 01, 2008

Ryazan: Gateway to the Russian Heartland

My Ryazan

By Andrey Gusachenko

Ryazan is one of Russia’s most ancient towns. It is its soul - a living source of culture and architecture. Andrey Gusachenko, one of our favorite photographers (his images of St. Petersburg By Night form our 2008 Wall Calendar), visits there frequently. We asked him to contribute a photo essay with some historical and personal notes.

Founded in 1095, today’s Ryazan was first known as Pereyaslavl-Ryazan.

The original Ryazan - Stary (“Old”) Ryazan - lay 60 to the southeast, down the river Oka. Stary Ryazan was destroyed in 1237 by the army of Khan Baty, of the Mongol Horde. Pereyaslavl-Ryazan was renamed Ryazan in 1778.

Today, Ryazan is the administrative, industrial and cultural center of Ryazan oblast. It sits in the northwestern part of the oblast, about 200 km outside Moscow. It has a population of 515,000.

I visit Ryazan several times a year. My parents have lived here for almost 30 years and the older they get, the more often I try to visit.

How does one get from Moscow to Ryazan? In Soviet times there was a popular anecdote:

Brezhnev asks the First Secretary of Ryazan Communist Party Oblast Committee: “Have you resolved the problem with lack of food in the city?”

“Yes, it has been.”

“How?”

“Well, I added four additional commuter trains to Moscow!”

True enough, back then, Moscow had everything and Ryazan had nothing but bread and marinated mushrooms. So Ryazanovites (Ryazanovtsy in Russian ??) periodically stormed Moscow in order to stock up on food and clothing.

Commuter trains were filled to capacity in both directions. It took four and a half hours each way and, if you were not lucky enough to get a seat when you boarded, you would likely stand all the way home, listening to your fellow passengers’ stories of their “storming” of Moscow. Oh, and commuter trains had no toilets…

The same commuter trains are running today, but now there are second-class cars, which do have toilets and dining car. There is also the comfortable Beryozka - an express train that makes the trip in just three hours and 20 minutes. Of course there are clean and comfortable buses today too, but Moscow traffic can make such a road trip longer than one could ever enjoy.

Russia should not be judged by Moscow or St. Petersburg. In Ryazan one sees Russia in all its beauty... Just 200 kilometers from Moscow and you are in a different world.

Civilization is seeping into Ryazan ever so slowly and gradually, allowing locals to get used to new things at their own speed, without great leaps forward. Industry and trade are developing, and big money has shown up, yet perhaps not as quickly as one might like.

Red October – a long famous brand – bought up the local candy factory, and business improved; the factory started working in three shifts. New equipment arrived, raw materials are delivered regularly and the local managers do not have to worry about distribution and sales – that is handled in the Moscow office. Simple Ryazanovites do not bother about who controls the factory’s stock, as long as there is stable employment and a regular paycheck for the work they know so well.

Not long ago, in the 1950s, Ryazan’s infrastructure was completely undeveloped. The downtown area was barely paved and there were just rows and rows of one-story wooden houses on most of the streets. Today the city’s landscape is changing. There are beautiful new houses being built and new roads are being constructed and paved. Still, you can easily discover the city’s timeless beauty if you know where to look.

Before the 15th century, the capital of Ryazan oblast was Spassk, a town near Ryazan on the banks of Oka. Still further back, in 1096, Ryazan was actually a country in its own right.

In the 12th century, one of old Rus’ first monasteries - Olgovsky Uspensky - was built on the territory of Ryazan. From manuscripts dating to 1350-1402, we know that the height of Ryazan’s power and influence were during the rule of Prince Oleg Ivanovich. An extraordinary warrior and politician, he ably maneuvered between the Mongols, Lithuania, and Moscow. (In 1380, at the Battle of Kulikovo field, Oleg fought alongside the Mongols against the Russian forces.) But his successors were unable to maintain that independence, and in 1521 Moscow gained control over Ryazan.

Pereyaslavl-Ryazan began to be ruled by Khabar Simsky, the vice regent of a Moscow Prince. Famous for his military conquests, he beat back the attack of the Crimean Tatars and confiscated from them a certificate issued by Prince Vasily of Moscow, granting the Tatars the right to tax Russians. The Uspensky Cathedral bell tower in the Ryazan Kremlin immortalizes the event with an engraving of Nikolai Karamazin’s words:

“On this spot stood Glebovsky Tower, a stone structure with gates and embrasures. from which, in 1521, Ivan Khabar Simsky, son of the warrior Vasily Obrazets, with the help of gunner Jordan, defeated the Tatars of Crimean Khan Magmet-Girey. Prior to the defeat, Khabar took from the Khan the certificate issued by the Moscow prince… for which he received the title of Noble and his services were entered into the books to be remembered for centuries.”

Of course, the kremlin is one the main reasons to visit Ryazan.

It is the city’s most ancient nucleus, the spot where it was founded in 1095, and it is protected on three sides by rivers: the Trubezh and its tributary, the Lybed (now in an underground tunnel inside city limits). Towers and stonewalls protected the fourth side. Although these do not survive, a rampart and a ditch stood here between the 8th and 17th centuries.

The five-domed Uspensky Cathedral (1693 -1699), built by Yakov Bukhtovstovy in the Baroque style, occupies the center of the kremlin. Seventy-two meters tall (taller than the Cathedral of St. Basil’s in Moscow), it is one of the best surviving examples of Russian architecture from that era. Brick walls harmonize with carved white portals and window frames. Nikolay Solomonov, an apprentice to Simon Ushakov, created the four-tiered iconostasis.

Nearby is the bell tower, crafted in the Classical style. It took 50 years - from 1789 to 1840 - to build, with the architects Russko, Ton, and Andrey Voronikhin all taking turns at it.

The Nativity of the Christ Cathedral (still functioning) dates to the 15th century and is one of the kremlin’s oldest preserved buildings. It was rebuilt in the 19th century such that it looked nothing like the original, and today represents many styles, Classical and Pseudo-Byzantium being the most prominent.

The single-domed Archangel Cathedral (15th-17th centuries), former private church of the prince, has survived largely as it was constructed. The kremlin also has a few other structures dating back to the 17th century. There is the so-called Oleg Palace, which really are bishops quarters built where the palace presumably stood; a hotel for servants that was initially used as storage; Choir (1658) and Consistory buildings with porches in the ancient Russian style; and a few other structures.

At the southern end of the kremlin is Spassk Monastery, which has a separate wall and tower. It includes the five-domed Church of the Epiphany (1647) and Savior-Transfiguration Cathedral (1702), and a hotel for nobility (17th century, but almost completely rebuilt in 19th century). At one time, there was another monastery in the northern part of kremlin: Dukhovsky (Holy Spirit) Monastery. Of this, only the Church of Holy Spirit (1642) remains.

Most of the kremlin buildings are under the care of the museum preserve. Historical exhibitions are held in the Oleg Palace, which has a diorama of the Tatar invasion of Ancient Ryazan. Bishops are in residence in the Choir building, and the diocese is housed in the Consistory. Archangel Cathedral houses religious treasures.

In 1995, UNESCO designated the Ryazan Kremlin a historical monument. By a decree of Russian President, that same year it was included in the list of the country’s most treasured cultural heritage sites.

Ryazan was the birthplace of the famous physiologist and first Russian Noble Laureate, Ivan Pavlov. The founder of modern astronomy, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, began his work in Ryazan, developing astrological maps and tables. He took his teacher qualification exams here. The house of the famous researcher, traveler, and writer Lavrenty Zagoskin is still here, and so is the place where the botanist Ivan Michurin lived while attending college. Other famous names are also associated with the city, including the satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, novelist and historian Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate Konstantin Paustovsky, and actor Alexander Fatushin.

The poet Sergey Yesenin, who often wrote hymns to the beauty of the Russian countryside, grew up on the banks of Oka. There is a monument to him in downtown Ryazan in which it appears as if his figure is growing up out of the ground. His face is expressive, his hands are spread wide, and the collar of his shirt is open. Behind the monument are his beloved birch, mountain ash and maple trees. The figure of a flying stork is engraved in the pedestal.

Indeed, one of the most wonderful characteristics of Ryazan is the organic unity which exists between its grandiose kremlin buildings and the nature that surrounds them – the Oka valley, with its endless fields and forests disappearing over the horizon.

Not far away from the city is the Oka Biosphere Reserve and a state nature reserve which is famous for its colony of buffalo, its stork farm, and for the natural beauty of the river Pra, which also encircles the city.