Show villages in the Kostroma region. In the outback of the Kostroma region - a world of travel

24.04.2020

Thirty kilometers along a bumpy dirt road is a promising start. But this is just the beginning. Soon the road turned into an ordinary dirt road with wide holes filled with rainwater. There's nothing you can do, we have no others :)

2. But it soon ended, so the remaining two and a half kilometers had to be walked.
Here they are, the roads Kostroma region!

3. And here it is, the forest tower, or rather all that remains of it. Seeing this, at first the thought even flashed through my mind: was it really that I was too late? I was getting ready to go here and now I came to the ruins. But the point here is different.

4. Let's come closer.

5. Fortunately, he did not disappear forever, this is a reconstruction. I read somewhere that they had taken the tower in Ostashevo seriously, but that the work was progressing at such a pace was a pleasant surprise. I really want to hope that it will be restored, and nothing will prevent the log house from being returned to its place.

6. All trim and decorations are stored under a special canopy. Once they are put back in place, everything may not seem so new.

8. On the foundation, among the construction debris, there are even surprisingly preserved scraps of old pre-revolutionary newspapers.

9. It’s good that the turret remained, removed from the roof before the restoration began. Looking at it, you can easily imagine the beauty of the old mansion.

10.

11.

12. Nearby in the tall grass are the destroyed houses of the abandoned village of Ostashevo, the agony of which began back in the 70s, and ended with the implementation of the program for the consolidation of towns and villages.
In such places, in the wilderness and desolation, not imaginary, but real, you always feel somehow different, and the sense of time slows down. Not even half a day has passed, but it seems like an eternity has already passed.
It would seem that I just walked along a country road and looked at abandoned places, but no, I didn’t just walk, I looked into my soul and, as if from the outside, looked at all our everyday, hustle and not always easy to explain life, I saw its best and most clearly as never before. the worst sides. And yet we can change a lot.

13.

14.

15. Faleleevo. It's already a village. You can imagine what life was like here before. And now, the farms are in disrepair, a dozen houses and two rusting tractors.

16.

17. Church of Elijah the Prophet. Who knows, maybe she will be reborn soon.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24. Old frescoes on the walls of the village church are quite well preserved. Indeed, they were built to last.

25.

26. Having walked through the entire village and without meeting a single person, without seeing a single sign of life, it may seem that Faleleevo is also abandoned. But that's not true.
Not far from the church there are hewn logs, and the farm nearby has horses and even a bee apiary. So life has not left here, but rather returns.

27.

28. The village of Vvedenskoye, already located on the “high road”, is not in such desolation, thanks to the summer residents who come here for the summer.
Well, it's time to head back.

29.

30.

The trip took place thanks to his extensive experience in off-road travel - Vladimir, an extreme traveler, who unexpectedly invited Katya and me on a three-day trip around the outskirts of the Galich and Chukhloma lakes. The Ford Ranger allowed us to carry out this trip - this five-meter, two-ton SUV made its way where there was no trace of it. Hiking equipment in the form of a tent, mattresses, etc. It was full, there were even chairs and a table, which was a pleasant surprise for me, because I expected to sit on tree stumps. Special and big thanks to him for all the troubles that he took upon himself. So, let's go!
We started from Moscow at seven in the morning, and by eleven we were already in Kostroma. After eating at poppy, purchasing food and filling up the gas tank, we headed to the city of Bui. On the way, we decide to stop at a legendary place - the village of Susanino - the once prosperous village of Molvitino with many merchant buildings.

The main attraction of the village is the Resurrection Church of the 17th century. Depicted in the painting by A.K. Savrasova "The Rooks Have Arrived".
Now in the church there is a museum of I. Susanin. We went to look at the exhibitions, but there was nothing inside regarding the historical past of the village. The central composition is occupied by the history of the Romanov family, in particular Nicholas II (this sovereign has already become an eyesore).

The weather suddenly began to become capricious, occasionally pouring rain on the roads and periodically gathering clouds. Upon arrival in Bui, we examined the railway depot with a turntable and an original steam locomotive from 1952. We didn’t linger for long and drove towards the end point of the first day, the village of Gorki, Chukhloma district. On the way we pass a number of abandoned villages. In one such place, Vnukovo, we stop, or rather, we get to it through forests and fields. Several huge houses, a few small ones and many completely destroyed ones. We climbed and looked. We made sure that the last resident left the village in 2008.

In the village of Elegino, the road we drive through ends and we turn onto a country road, or rather, what’s left of it. After some time we reach the huge abandoned village of Khoroshevo, where there are only two inhabitants, and even those come here only for the summer. There is no further road. A local peasant, who greeted us warily at first, nevertheless suggests the direction and we, vaguely distinguishing the trail of tractors that once passed there, slowly get to Pleshcheyevo.

Among the dense thickets we notice the Pleshcheevskaya school of the 1st level, located in a former almshouse. A two-story building with many unusual stoves.

Then, on our own two feet, we walk through the forest in search of the church that existed here in the 19th century. We find, here it is - the Kazan Church of 1804.

Having looked at the local sights, we head back to Khoroshevo, where the peasant and his wife invite us into their house, give us tea with their own honey (their own apiary) and tell us life stories. However, their stories change our plans: it turns out that the intended villages cannot be reached even by SUV, because people only go there on tractors. Of course, we could get there, lowering the wheels, dragging ourselves on a winch, but this would take the whole evening, but our goal was different and we decide to go to Lake Galich and spend the night there. Taking a shortcut and taking a shorter route to the lake is also without options, so we return to Bui, stopping along the way in an ancient village with beautiful name Lycurgus. On the edge of the village rises temple complex built no later than 1685.

On the territory there is a separate stone building, which is the ancestral tomb of the local landowners Gotovtsevs.

Driving through Bui again, we specially slow down near a monumental building from the Soviet era.

There is just a terrible road going towards Galich, which makes it clear that we don’t have time to get to the lake after dark and decide to stop for the night in another place.

This place turns out to be the picturesque steep bank of the Noli River.

Volodya takes everything upon himself: puts up a tent, makes a fire, organizes a table. We sat around drinking strong drinks and talking about life until the first night. Katya didn’t let me sleep in a tent and sent me to spend the night in the car, fortunately it was quite spacious there and it wasn’t so cool that night. In the morning, after snacking on some doshiraki, we break up camp and move on. First on the second day we visit the Grishino estate, lost in the forests next to the Toiga River. Main house from the 1880s.

Afterwards we reach a village with a name unusual for Russians and common for Meryans, Unorozh, on the banks of the Veksa.

Annunciation Church built in 1814.

Local beauty.

Leaving Unorozh we head to the once large village of Chmutovo, where today there are only two residents.

On the edge of the village stands the Trinity Church built in 1820.

Afterwards we stopped at the empty village of Matveevskoye (I think). There we understand that it is possible to get to the two planned abandoned churches in the villages of Voznesenskoye and Synkovo, but this will take too much time, and the churches of the Kostroma region for the most part not so outstanding in architecture. Therefore, we don’t waste time on them and move on. On our way we visit the Umilenie churchyard, which is in the north of Lake Galich. The Zaozersky Avraamiev Monastery has existed here for several centuries.

The largest stone Church of the Assumption was built in 1716, but rebuilt in 1856.

IN Soviet years there was a holiday home "10 years of October" and an orphanage. Since then, the crib has been there.

“The weather today wasn’t great”- we thought, but this did not stop us and the wheels rustled towards the city of Chukhloma, towards the main goal of our trip to the village of Pogorelovo. We get to Chukhloma relatively quickly, turn towards the formerly ancient city of Sudai, and there we decide to try extreme sports and take the turn to Pogorelovo, through Vengino. The roads are still quite decent, although not for long.

On the way, we examine the Church of the Mother of God, built in 1838, in the village of Lavrentyevskoye.

Scattered along the way are the remains of completely extinct villages. We look into one of these - Firyukovo.

By hook or by crook, on still acceptable roads, we get to the huge village of Assorino, which in Soviet times had its own farms, two schools, hundreds of residents, but with the beginning of perestroika, by our time, it has turned into an endangered village with only 11 residents. Opposite is the village of Plotina, where a village with 300 hard workers employed in logging was built and flourished until the mid-90s. There are still dozens of hefty log houses standing here.

And so, starting from this place, real off-road adventures awaited us. A local resident explained the road to us, assuring us that they were driving in the direction we needed. Apparently, we took a wrong turn and... boom! They sat down. Katerina jumped out of the car and ran a kilometer ahead out of fear.

And again, the skill and experience of Vladimir, who used the winch twice, helped us get out of the quagmire. I shamelessly photographed the entire process, only once helping to attach the cable hook to the tree trunk.

Such a difficult journey paid off - we are at the merchant’s house in the village of Vengino, on the banks of the Nozhiga River. Just as we got there, the weather cleared up.

Inside there were a few interesting things, mainly in the form of original, never seen before, such stoves.

Hurry, hurry, while it's still light! We cross the Viga River.

It all started like this:
-Will you go to the abandoned villages of the Kostroma region for four days?
The offer is inspiring, especially in November.

Of all my friends, only two reacted: photographer Sasha Kan and friend Ksyusha, while we sorted out the missing foam sleeping bags and burner, it was time to leave, pictures of overnight stays in the forest, wolf howls and snow-covered roads were spinning in my head...

Every time such adventures are conceived feverishly and with delight, hastily getting ready and thinking through the route, and only on the train or on the highway does this dual feeling of absurdity appear. Outside the window, dull autumn landscapes familiar to everyone flashed by, as if on TV, and it was strange to understand that tomorrow we would need to somehow integrate into exactly the same landscape, only also very far from any roads, railways and even automobiles.
The Kostroma region is one of the most endangered regions in Russia; if you look at Wikimapia, you can see an extensive network of “roads” to towns and villages, remnants of the former power of the era of peasant Russia. In these parts, the Catherine Highway passed from St. Petersburg to Siberia, where cab drivers made their way through the snowstorm and convicts went to hard labor.

We boarded the train on a chilly autumn evening and got off in the morning at the snow-covered Nikolo-Poloma station.

We were greeted by Lenin and an empty train station with a toilet outside

While we were waiting for the Moscow train that was carrying Ksyusha, we walked around Poloma.

We walked for about ten minutes and it (Nikolo-Poloma) ended. We stood at the edge of the field and looked at the snowstorm.

We returned, met Ksyusha, had difficulty finding someone who knew the bus schedule and went to Parfenevo.

The female conductor, smiling, asked where we were going in such bad weather, and without waiting for an answer, she continued to collect change, giving out long ribbons of tickets in return.

After half an hour of shaking, we got out and tramped along the muddy roads, skirting puddles.

I have already walked here, and then with a light backpack and on a dry road it seemed that 20 kilometers flew by unnoticed, but this time, having reached Trifonovo, the first abandoned village, which stands on the road exactly halfway along the road, it already began to get dark,

Our legs were already giving way from the heavy backpack, but it was only halfway to Anosovo, from where we had to cross a field to the village of Anfimovo with a couple of surviving houses and an abandoned church. We were going to spend the night there. Along the way, we didn’t meet a single hitchhiker, only a modified UAZ drove towards us,
We all started taking pictures of him, the driver smiled and waved his hand))

At dusk, the first hitch appeared, the nine swerved along the road, trying not to fly into a hole and stopped next to us, an elderly couple looked a little tensely at our group

Hello, can you give me a lift to Anosovo?

No, guys, we don’t have any room in the back, just wait, now there will be more cars

Another half hour passed, but there were no more cars. The prospect of spending the night by the road was not encouraging, but soon it became completely dark and there was nothing else to do, because everyone was very tired.

Then the headlights of a jeep appeared from behind.

Where are you going guys?

We're in Anosovo, can you give us a lift?

Where is it?

It's not far from here

Sit down, throw your backpacks in the trunk

What kind of cells do you have here?

This is for dogs

Where are the dogs?

Yes, there at the base, in the forest

We sat down and drove slowly, it turned out that in Malgino (the dead-end point of this road) they had built a base for hunters, after my stupid question about a hunting license, our saviors somehow hesitated,

And what prompted me to ask?

We are driving, we see footprints and we think “wow, the locals come here”, but it turned out that you were the one spanking, where are you from?
- From St. Petersburg, from Moscow

From Novosibirsk, Ksyusha proudly inserted her two cents

Oh, this is serious =) yes, we are also from Moscow. We came here to relax for the weekend

At the entrance to Anosovo we asked to stop.
- and where are you going now?
- Yes, we are here in the forest somewhere
- Come on, you guys are desperate.
- Have a good hunting
- They don’t wish good luck on the hunt, otherwise there won’t be a hunt.
- Well then, just have a good time

We crossed a field with deep puddles and noticed traces of a sleigh and a horse. The prospect of meeting someone in an abandoned village was a little stressful. And although the tracks led in the opposite direction, the news that someone had been there for several hours was not very encouraging. The night, the snow-covered forest and the rising wind did not contribute to relaxation. When we crossed the field, we found a bench at the edge of the forest and sat down to rest. Sanya remembered how he was traveling on a train one winter and, peering into the darkness, thought that he would never agree to be in such a forest now.

Laughed.

When we finally climbed a high hill, we saw the dark silhouettes of houses appear. We were terribly tired, cold and wet, storming deep snowdrifts and cold river on the way to. Approaching the only surviving house with intact windows, we saw a sign at the entrance: “No outsiders allowed,” they pushed the door and it opened. We went into the darkness, there were several rooms inside,

In the largest one there was a table and a bed, they took off their backpacks and hung a lantern on a chandelier hook. We took out a burner and decided to heat up the tea, but an unpleasant surprise awaited us: the gas cylinder did not fit the burner; it had a different thread. I had to overcome fatigue and laziness, go outside to find firewood and some kind of basin, light a fire and melt snow in a saucepan. While we were walking it was very warm, but in the evening it got colder, maybe even down to minus ten. The sky cleared and the moon appeared.

We had a hard time waiting for the water to warm up for tea and porridge with stew; melting the snow was still a thankless task.

We pitched a tent right in the room to make it warmer, ate in the dark, because the lanterns died within a few hours, and the IKEA batteries discharged terribly quickly. Already at night I photographed a little of the village in the light of the moon.

The moon was shining so brightly, the wind was humming through the cracks of the rickety log houses, it was terribly cold, chilly and scary. I hate darkness and loneliness. Moreover, in the middle of the forest, I grew up in Moscow and nature was present in my life only in the form of a simple dacha village near Moscow...
Honestly, I feel much more comfortable in the city sewer than in nature...
But overcoming this fear with the help of will and reason is a pleasure.
So I stood for five minutes over each picture, drawing my shoulders in and shivering, looking at the prickly stars above my head...

Anfimovo is the only cemetery in the area, because only here there is a church, although it is inactive.
The lopsided crosses in the moonlight gave the picture a special mood =)

We went to bed thinking about who came on the cart to this village and whether he would return in the morning.

We woke up late, around twelve o'clock. I was haunted by my joint with a burner (and it was my joint =)
and I went alone to Anosovo to look for a store.

It was quiet in the village, the roads were covered with snow, and rare traces were barely visible on several streets...

The store and post office were closed, and we had to wander through the empty streets in search of living creatures. I was lucky; a man in boots, camouflage and a mustache was walking towards me.

Excuse me, do you know that the store is not open today?

Of course it doesn’t work, today is Saturday - a short day.

And tomorrow?

It won't work at all tomorrow

Do you think you can find a gas cylinder for a burner in a store in Parfenevo?

So in Parfenevo, too, the shops are already closed... You go to Marina, ask the store to open, she will open

Where does she live?

There at the end of the village

I went looking and came across a horse harnessed to a sleigh, most likely the same one whose tracks we saw on the road; I learned from the grandmother I met that no one goes to our village, most likely the owner of the horse simply took hunters there to chase hares. And the owner of the house where we stayed lives in St. Petersburg and has not come for a long time.

After a long search for the saleswoman's house, I managed to find her,
she came out in boots and a robe, with a pleasant face and that incomparable melodious voice starting with “O”. Oddly enough, she agreed to stomp back to the store. It’s also very strange that they only had a few candles; in case of a power outage, everyone uses generators or batteries; naturally, there were no gas cylinders either. As well as plain water, because “who in the village needs water?” I had to buy mineral water, pour it out and fill the tap with water, during all this time Marina managed to tell the whole simple way of life of Anosovo. The state store has not been open for a long time, only the private one remains, but it will most likely close. The youth have left, the children have grown up, the school was also canceled as unnecessary, and sometimes the post office works. And half of the houses are abandoned. Previously, the collective farm still kept cows, but now it only produces hay; the barn has already collapsed. Life stops. Only in the summer do some people come.

After parting with Marina, I walked along the outskirts, past rows of ruined huts

And a collapsed cowshed. The snow was falling slowly and the silence was deafening. Surprisingly, just a couple of years ago the barn stood, and the threshing towers were intact.

2006

2010

2010

2010

I have long been haunted by the thought that if we all disappear in an instant, then literally in five hundred to a thousand years there will be absolutely nothing left that will tell us about our civilization. Skyscrapers will collapse, streets will be overgrown with forests, hard drives will rot, just like books, iPhones, cars, submarines, airplanes and all our other achievements.
Perhaps some buildings made of stone remain in the form of ruins overgrown with moss, posing difficult problems for future archaeologists. But, it’s one thing for a thousand years, but it’s quite another when, before your eyes, time levels history, an entire era, and even more than one. Although the bell tower in neighboring Malgino, built three hundred years ago, still stands. They said that the locals wanted to take it apart because the bricks were very good, but they didn’t succeed. It turned out to be too strong. How much longer will she survive in this endless struggle?

These places have been attracting me like a magnet for a long time...

She returned to our village already at dusk,

Outside, the sky cleared again and the full moon came out,

Ksyusha and Sanya were lying in the tent and did not want to get out.
The wind picked up and it got cold again. I really wanted to light the stove, but it was too risky, so I had to make do with candles.

Anything is better than freezing in the dark.

Still, we had some clues in these parts; this point on the map was not chosen by chance. The cold was doing its job and after a long struggle with communication interruptions, through friends and acquaintances we found the phone number of Aunt Galya, who lives in Anosovo and agreed to shelter us the next night. Inspired by this idea, we climbed into our sleeping bags with the dream of a bathhouse.

We filmed a bit this morning

And we were going for the second half. As a result, we arrived in Anosovo already after dark.

We knocked on the first house and found out how we could find our good Galina. She, also in a robe and boots, greeted us very cordially with the same melodious speech. She fed her with potatoes and all sorts of pickles, and sent her to a bathhouse, although not a hot one, but still a bathhouse.
It turned out that the next day at seven in the morning a minibus was leaving for Parfenevo, which was very fortunate because we didn’t want to tramp 10 kilometers along a snowy road again, and our train was leaving at five in the evening.

.
And this is not the first year that its restoration has been carried out.
"The tree is Russia, it is our history, our contribution to world culture. There is no Italian piece of the soul of the Kremlin cathedrals in the tree. The tree is the Russian “hut space.”
The situation in the preservation of wooden architecture is one of the saddest. We found an album from 1942, dedicated to wooden architecture. Of the 70 monuments selected for the 1942 album, 27 reached us. And the best of the best were selected there. Private wooden architecture disappeared by 90% or more. Now, perhaps, there is not a single village left in the whole country that we can show our children and say - here is Russia, chopped into a region, here are its churches and chapels, huts rich and poor, bright and smokey, barns and threshing floors, barns and baths, wells and worship crosses."

And that's how he was inside.

Later it turned out that parts of the project of the famous architect Ivan Pavlovich Ropet, published in the magazine "Motives of Russian Art", were used in the construction of the house.

And the house was built by Martyan Sazonovich Sazonov, a peasant, a native of the village of Astashevo, Chukhloma district, a carpenter, a successful entrepreneur, and philanthropist, in 1897.

In the center, the owner of the house Martyan Sazonovich Sazonov (1842-1914) and Ekaterina Alekseevna Sazonova (nee Dobrovolskaya) (1875-ca. 1950), his second wife; behind them, apparently, Catherine’s father, the deacon of the Elias Church; and perhaps her sister; peasants of Astashevo and surrounding villages.

This is what the house looked like at the beginning of the 20th century.
Well, then decades of oblivion.
“Sazonov left the house soon after the revolution, taking out all the furniture.
In 1943, the house was opened and a post office, library and paramedic station were installed in it. By that time the gazebo had completely rotted away and a dance floor was built in its place. The terrace windows were broken in the 1950s and it remained open. And in the 60s the roof began to leak. It seems that they even bought iron to cover it, and then they opened the attic and saw that everything was rotten there. The post office and paramedic station have moved out, and the library has closed altogether. And soon the village died out and everything was overgrown with forest."

“Our plans are to restore the house and create a guest house on its basis and Cultural Center, as well as the Museum of Peasant Stories. The Kostroma region is one of the most depressed regions of Russia, which was hit by the cataclysms of the 20th century - collectivization, consolidation, extinction of the Non-Black Earth Region - in the most stupid and cruel way. On the other hand, in the Kostroma outback, where more than 80% of villages have died out, many amazing things have been preserved. First of all, here in some places there is still preserved a way of life that is rapidly disappearing under the onslaught of modernity. We want to preserve this way of life not in a museum, but in action - we will manage the farm, cook in a Russian oven, try to plant flax, etc."
If you want to help, read how you can do this.

The second house is no less interesting and beautiful.

"Pogorelovo is a forgotten and abandoned village in the Kostroma region. Once upon a time it was a state-owned (and therefore rich) village. Local peasants mainly made a living as migrant workers, that is, they went to work in St. Petersburg. Some earned decent money and got on their feet firmly. In one of the Ivan Dmitrievich Polyashov was born into such families.The crowning achievement of his career was subcontracting on repair work in Winter Palace. Having received the status of a hereditary honorary citizen, Polyashov built a tower house in 1903 (and in addition became one of the largest landowners in Chukhloma district, built a modern mill in Viga, a chapel in Pogorelovo, a new chapel in the parish church in Dorka, etc. ). "

"The house is unique in its eclecticism - a building with a complex volumetric layout, echoing the best examples country dachas in the Russian style, with incredibly rich interiors of the state rooms, at the same time completely practical from a village point of view - everything here is done wisely and everything is adapted for running a peasant household."

“The fate of the house after the revolution repeats the fate of dozens of estates in the Kostroma region - the house was requisitioned in 1918. Polyashov was moved to one of the rooms on the ground floor, and the village council and several peasant families were housed in the house. Polyashov died in 1935, having escaped dispossession and repression.
In 1972, the village council closed and moved out of the Polyashovsky house. The house would undoubtedly have disappeared if not for pure chance. A feature of Moscow avant-garde artists - Anatoly Zhigalov and Natalya Abalakova, quite by chance, that same summer they conceived a kayak trip along the Vige River. The Chukhloma region in those days was still a terrible wilderness, roads were just beginning to be built, and you had to get here by An-2 from Kostroma. In addition, the Kostroma region was several times less popular than the Russian North in terms of kayaking trips. Therefore, their appearance in Pogorelovo was a complete accident. Having seen the house, Anatoly bought it (which was not easy - as in all cases of purchasing state property)."