Bryansk



Bryansk

Name: Ekaterina Razina

Age: 28

Profession: Photographer

City: Bryansk, Dyat'kovo (both in Bryansk region)

How long have you been doing photography? What style or genre most interests you? I am a professional wedding photographer, and started shooting while I was still in school. I prefer the genres: portrait, industrial landscape, and event atmospheric reportage.

Can you give us a short description of your city? Where is it located? What is it famous for? Bryansk is a city and the administrative center of Bryansk region, located 379 kilometers (235 mi) southwest of Moscow; it recently celebrated its 1031 anniversary. In ancient times, the Vyatichi – warlike tribes, lived on the banks of the Desna river. The legendary bogatyr Peresvet, who killed the Tatar warrior Chelubey in the Battle of Kulikovo, was born here. Our wild forests also preserve the history of the Bryansk Partisans in great Patriotic war.

Today's Bryansk is an important center for steel and machinery manufacturing, and is home to many large factories. The main industries are machine building, metalworking, chemical, electrical equipment, electronics, wood, textile and food industries, locomotives, diesel engines, freight cars, motor graders, pavers and other road equipment, agricultural equipment, construction materials, and garments. The population of Bryansk is about 430,000. The city has different shopping centres, theatres, cinemas and all sorts of modern entertainment.

What is something about your city that only locals would know? Places in Bryansk region have some unofficial names, like The Great Wall of China, Mexico, and even... Isengard and the Field of Miracles. Only in Bryansk can ask the bus driver to return you to 'The Motherland' ('Rodina'), or 'The Dream' ('Mechta') and actually get on the bus with the inscription 'THE JET' ('Samolyot').

People in Bryansk pronounced their g's like 'gh', just like Belarusians or Ukrainians.

Which places or sites are a must for someone to see if they visit your city? 

Bryansk: The Mound of Immortality like in Central Park Solovyi ('The nightingales'). This earthen embankment is 12 meters high and is topped with an 18-meter-high star. Bryansk citizens brought the earth here to build this colossal monument. A time capsule with a letter to people in the future is hidden beneath the Mound. It will be opened in 2017, 50 years from when it was placed there. 

Dyatkovo: Visit the Eighth Wonder of the World – the world's singular crystal iconostasis in the Church of The Burning Bush Icon. The iconostasis weighs seven tons and was made in Dyatkovo Crystal Factory, founded by the noblewoman Maria Maltsova in 1790.

Website: http://rozarock.ru/

Instagram: @rozarock



Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas

This exciting new trilogy by a Russian author – who has been compared to Orhan Pamuk and Umberto Eco – vividly recreates a lost world, yet its passions and characters are entirely relevant to the present day. Full of mystery, memorable characters, and non-stop adventure, The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas is a must read for lovers of historical fiction and international thrillers.  
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Chekhov Bilingual

Chekhov Bilingual

Some of Chekhov's most beloved stories, with English and accented Russian on facing pages throughout. 
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
How Russia Got That Way

How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955