We are talking about Mologa and the Mologa district - here is the epicenter of the Volga tragedy. When filled with water in 1941-1947, 2 cities, about 700 villages with 26 thousand households, 40 parish churches, 3 monasteries, dozens of former noble estates, unexplored archaeological monuments, forests, fields, meadows disappeared under water in the lake part of the Rybinsk reservoir. , which produced the best hay in Russia. An area of developed dairy farming and nationally significant production of high-quality butter and cheese was under water. About 150 thousand people were resettled.
The city of Mologa was located at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga. Now this place is located in the southern part of the artificial sea: five kilometers east of the island of Svyatovsky Mokh and three kilometers north of the “Babi Gory” direction sign, standing on the concrete bases of shields that mark the navigable fairway running over the old bed of the Volga.
Mologa. From the atlas of the Yaroslavl province - 1858.
The city was first mentioned in chronicles in 1149. But it probably arose earlier as an administrative and commercial center at the junction of river routes along which the Slavic colonization of the region took place, which included it in the sphere of influence Kievan Rus. This could have happened at the turn of the 10th-11th centuries under the Rostov prince Yaroslav the Wise, who “set the earth” by determining the size and location of tribute collection. In the XIV-XV centuries, Mologa became the center of the principality. Later, from 1505 to 1777, it was part of the Uglich principality, and then the district. IN XVII-XVIII centuries the city existed as a trading post. Not far from it, in Stary Kholopye, and then in Mologa itself, there was the largest fair, where Russian, Eastern and European merchants gathered. In 1777, during the period of the provincial reform of Catherine II, Mologa was returned to the status of a city - the center of the district of the same name.
Mologa of the 17th-18th centuries consisted of three settlements: Upper, Middle and Lower, stretching along the banks of the Volga and the Mologa River. During the period of the city's existence as the capital of the principality, there was a Kremlin located in Nizhny Posad, near the confluence of rivers. This place was washed away by water and later, due to the loss of the role of the center of the principality and the status of the city, the Kremlin was no longer restored. The city had a layout typical of the Volga industrial settlements and settlements, in which there was no Kremlin - the city-forming core, and the life of the population was mainly connected with the river.
On March 21, 1780, Catherine II approved the Regular Development Plan for Mologa, developed by the architects of the Urban Development Commission. In the geometric scheme of the new plan, the city largely repeated the old system of organization. Towards the end XIX century it stretches along the banks of the Volga and Mologa for 4.5 kilometers with four parallel streets. They were intersected by two dozen short alleys, forming a network of neighborhoods, the farthest of which were only 500-800 meters from the banks.
The picturesque spatial composition and appearance of the main “river facade” of Mologa was formed by five temples standing along the banks.
The oldest of the Youth churches - Ascension "in Zaruchye" in the northern part of the city - was built in 1765. The design of its facades used platbands with a characteristic arched sandstone and other elements of the Baroque style.
The old Resurrection Cathedral (1767) was an ordinary three-part church of the “Naryshkin” style. Despite the reconstruction of the 19th century, the temple and especially its bell tower, composed of three decreasing octagons, repeated the bell towers of earlier churches in Uglich.
In the center of the Volga embankment there was a new Epiphany Cathedral (1882), erected at the expense of the Molozhsk merchant of the 1st guild, honorary citizen of the city P.M. Podosenov, in a characteristic “Russian-Byzantine” style.
In the southern part of Mologa, in 1778, the wooden Exaltation of the Cross “old cemetery” church was cut down and then plastered. Its tented bell tower, with its clear lines, resembled the bell towers of the temple complexes of northern churchyards, and the temple part of the monument, composed of decreasing octagons, was made in the “Naryshkin” style of the turn of the 17th-18th centuries.
On the outskirts farthest from the shore, the All Saints Cemetery Church, built in 1805 in strict forms, was included in the panorama of the city with its tall, graceful domes and crosses. classic style.
Half a kilometer from the northern outskirts of Mologa on the river bank was located the Afanasyevsky Convent, which arose in the 14th century. Its extensive complex included 4 churches: the “warm” Trinity Cathedral (1788), the “summer” Cathedral of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (1840), the Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God (1826) and the wooden cemetery church of the Beheading of John the Baptist (1890), which stood near the fence. The cell and utility buildings built into the fence and the massive corner rotunda towers gave the ensemble an impressive, monumental appearance. The composition and design of stone churches and most buildings were dominated by classical style forms, and the wooden church was designed in the “Russian” style.
On the eve of the flooding, there were more than 900 houses in the city, about a hundred of which were made of stone. On the shopping area and the adjacent sections of the main streets there were about 200 shops and stores, as well as public buildings And educational institutions. The population was 7 thousand people. The famous Tikhvin water system began in Mologa - one of the routes from the Volga to the North-West, to the Baltic. In the summer, the city's population increased several times due to loaders, sailors, and watermen. At other times, there were up to 70 taverns in the city.
Mologa. Yaroslavskaya street.
Mologa. View from the water.
Mologa. Pond and gazebo in an orphanage.
Fire station.
Mologans.
Mologans.
Mologans.
Mologa. Central square.
In September 1935, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the start of construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes. The initial project for the creation of the Rybinsk reservoir envisaged the flooding of approximately 2,500 square kilometers (the territory of the state of Luxembourg), mainly along the Sheksna and Mologa rivers, the retaining level of the reservoir was supposed to be 98 m. Many territories of the Mologa region went under water. The city of Mologa was still allowed to live; its main part was located at 98-101 m above sea level and was not subject to flooding. But this seemed not enough. On January 1, 1937, the figure of 98 m was changed to 102 m, which almost doubled the amount of land subject to flooding. It was these 4 meters that cost Mologa his life...
The Rybinsk Museum contains terrible documents telling about those years.
Report
In addition to the report I submitted earlier, I report that there are 294 citizens who voluntarily wished to die with their belongings when the reservoir was filled.
These people have absolutely all suffered before nervous disorder health, thus total number The number of citizens killed 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 chained 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.
So Mologa left.
The city finally disappeared in 1947 when the filling of the Rybinsk Reservoir was completed.
Now there is neither a city nor a monastery here. Only occasionally after a dry summer decreases autumn days the foundations of buildings emerge from under the water to remind of themselves. Mologa, like a ghost, appears and disappears in the muddy green shallow waters, frightening and suppressing people who reach it with its landscape, which contains traces of grandiose destruction. Rusty iron of building connections, ruins of unnatural lilac-colored washed bricks, cobblestone pavements, sidewalks half-washed with sand and boulder foundations extending into the water, marking with their rows the direction of the former streets - Yaroslavskaya, Petersburgskaya, Cherepovetskaya... A depressing, creepy-looking “zero cycle”, life-size plan of the entire city. And among this chaos, the basement of the Epiphany Cathedral, which has resisted the pressure of ice and waves and is made of huge granite prisms connected with lead and iron, and the “imprints” of the Resurrection, Ascension and All Saints Churches with fallen cemetery monuments and the contours of the foundations of fences, which have not yet been washed away by sand, are recognizable. And all around is just as lifeless and deserted: in one direction, to the north and east, a gray expanse of water; in the other - to the south and west, kilometers of sands of the briefly exposed reservoir bottom. And among this sandy desert, fantastically improbable temporarily dried islands, crowned with pine manes, float like steppe mirages.
Photos from the 1990s - 2000s.
Photos from the 1990s - 2000s.
Photos from the 1990s - 2000s.
As a result of the strong-willed decision, thousands of kilometers of land were flooded and tens of thousands of people were displaced. Hundreds of people preferred death to resettlement home, and the city of Mologa and Mologa district were erased from geographical map USSR. Once upon a time, the Musin-Pushkin, Kurakin, and Volkonsky families loved to vacation in the Mologsky region. Now the land with more than seven hundred years of history lies at the bottom of the Rybinsk Reservoir.
The Rybinsk Reservoir was planned to be the largest artificial lake in the world by area. It is formed by the water-retaining structures of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex, located in the northern part of Rybinsk. The hydroelectric complex includes the building of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station with a capacity of 330 thousand kilowatts, earthen channel dams and their connecting dams, a concrete spillway dam and a single-chamber sluice.
Construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex began in 1935 near the village of Perebory at the confluence of the Sheksna and the Volga. In the fall of 1940, the Volga channel was blocked, and in the spring of 1941, filling of the reservoir began. To complete the work, residents of more than 600 villages and the city of Mologa had to be resettled to new places. Filling continued until 1947. The banks of the Rybinsk Reservoir are mostly low; damp meadows, forests, and swamps stretch along its coast. Only in places along the valleys of flooded rivers can you find cliffs covered with pine trees.
The ship's fairway goes far from the shores. The height of the waves reaches two meters. With the advent of the Rybinsk Reservoir, the climate in the areas adjacent to it changed. Summer became wetter and cooler, wheat and flax stopped ripening. The reservoir freezes over in the winter. The ice lasts from mid-November to early May. The average ice thickness reaches 60-70 centimeters. Navigation lasts on average 190 days.
The Rybinsk Sea is a giant laboratory of the Institute of Biology of Inland Waters of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In its northwestern part there is the Darwin Nature Reserve, which specializes in research into the influence of the reservoir on the natural complexes of the southern taiga.
On the Rybinsk Sea, a huge ice floe with an area of 4.5 thousand square meters is formed every year. km. and up to 1 meter thick. The presence of this giant refrigerator every spring delays the start of flowering of plants in the area by 2-3 weeks, and sometimes up to a month.
From the very beginning of the creation of the Rybinsk Reservoir, disputes about its fate have not subsided. IN lately in the Yaroslavl region, where most of the reservoir is located, the ideas of draining the reservoir and reviving the flooded Mologsky region began to prevail.
During the grandiose project to create the Volga-Kama cascade of dams in the 30-70s, about 700 thousand people were resettled. The symbol of the human tragedy that accompanied the construction was Mologa, a city that completely sank to the bottom of the Rybinsk Reservoir.
Mologa- a flooded city on the Rybinsk Reservoir.
In 1935, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vyacheslav Molotov and Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks Lazar Kaganovich signed a decree on the construction of waterworks in the area of Uglich and Rybinsk.
For construction, the Volzhsky forced labor camp was organized near Rybinsk, where up to 80 thousand prisoners, including “political” ones, worked.
Construction period poster
The rivers were blocked with dams to supply the capital and other cities with water, to build a waterway with sufficient navigable depths to Moscow, and to provide electricity to the developing industry.
Against the background of these global goals, the fate of individual people, villages and entire cities obviously seemed insignificant to the country. In total, during the construction of the Volga-Kama cascade, about 2,500 villages and hamlets were flooded, flooded, destroyed and moved; 96 cities, industrial settlements, settlements and villages. The rivers, which had always been a source of life for the inhabitants of these places, became rivers of exile and sorrow.
“Like a monstrous, all-destroying tornado swept over Mologa,” he later recalled about the resettlement local historian and Mologda resident Yuri Aleksandrovich Nesterov. “Just yesterday, people calmly went to bed, not thinking or wondering that the coming tomorrow would change their destinies so unrecognizably. Everything was mixed up, confused and spinning in a nightmare whirlwind. What seemed important, necessary and interesting just yesterday has lost all meaning today.”
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.
Celebration in the city square
The village of Mologa has been known since the 12th–13th centuries, and in 1777 it received the status of a county town. With the advent of Soviet power, the city became a regional center with a population of about 6 thousand people.
Mologa consisted of about a hundred stone houses and 800 wooden ones. After the impending flooding of the city was announced in 1936, the relocation of residents began. Most of the Mologans settled near Rybinsk in the village of Slip, and the rest dispersed to different cities of the country.
In total, 3645 square meters were flooded. km of forests, 663 villages, the city of Mologa, 140 churches and 3 monasteries. 130,000 people were resettled.
But not everyone agreed to voluntarily leave their home. 294 people chained themselves and were drowned alive.
It is difficult to imagine what tragedy these people experienced, deprived of their homeland. Until now, since 1960, meetings of Mologans have been held in Rybinsk, at which they remember their lost city.
After every winter with little snow and dry summer, Mologa appears from under the water, like a ghost, revealing its dilapidated buildings and even a cemetery.
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.
Plan of the city of Mologa.
Residents of Mologa
Nikolai Mikhailovich Novotelnov
Mologzhanin Nikolai Mikhailovich Novotelnov on the ruins of his city. Now Nikolai Novotelnov is 89.5 years old, and at the time of the flooding he was 15, he is one of the few surviving eyewitnesses of the resettlement.
“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.”
– 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 unnavigable. 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.
Experts are still arguing about the exact number of Volgolag victims. According to experts published on the portal Stalinizm.ru, the mortality rate in the camp was approximately equal to the mortality rate in the country as a whole.
And Kim Katunin, one of the prisoners of Volgolag, in August 1953 witnessed how employees of the Volgolag to be liquidated tried to destroy the personal files of prisoners by burning them in the furnace of the ship. Katunin personally carried out and preserved 63 folders of documents. According to Katunin, about 880 thousand people died in Volgolag.
This year's winter turned out to be light and snowy, and the remains of Mologa appeared on the surface of the Rybinsk reservoir - the ancient Russian city would have turned 865 years old this year if not for the decision to build the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station in 1935.
In September, we went to look at the “Russian Atlantis” and visit the Rybinsk hydroelectric station at the invitation of RusHydro.
Water itself, after the drought in the Volga region of 1921-22, was considered a strategic resource, and filling the future Rybinsk reservoir in those years was strategic important decision- the main water artery of the capital, the Moscow River, became very shallow and polluted, and the overpopulated city threatened to soon be left without a vital source.
On June 15, 1931, at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a resolution was adopted: “... to radically solve the problem of watering the Moscow River by connecting it with the upper reaches of the Volga River.”
It all started with the construction of the Moscow Canal (the old name was Moscow - Volga). Initially, it was planned to build three hydroelectric power stations with a capacity of 220 MW in Myshkin, Yaroslavl and Kalyazin. Later, this scheme was changed and two hydroelectric power stations were built in Uglich and Rybinsk with a total capacity of 440 MW (110 MW and 330 MW, respectively).
The construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex pursued another important goal - the creation of the Volga-Baltic waterway. Navigation on the Upper Volga before its confluence with the Mologa River was possible only during floods.
Work on deepening was carried out, but this did not lead to results, because the level immediately sank. When the Rybinsk, Uglich and Ivankovskoe reservoirs were created, a navigable passage 4.5 meters deep was formed.
We are going to the Rybinsk hydroelectric station. 
Construction of the hydroelectric complex began in 1935 near the village of Perebory at the confluence of the Sheksna and the Volga, and the main work on the hydroelectric station began in 1938-1939. 
Some sources claim that Stalin was personally interested in the progress of construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex, and raising the level from 98 to 102 meters was his initiative. Main goal: increasing the capacity of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station and ensuring more reliable navigation. Many residents were against the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station and the state regarded their actions as a betrayal. 
In April 1941, filling of the Rybinsk Reservoir began. The retaining water level was supposed to be about 98 m, but by 1937 this figure had increased and amounted to 102 meters. 
In 1941, the reservoir rose to a maximum of 97.5 m, in 1942 - to 99.3 m. Mologa is located at 98-101 meters. 
Now a favorite place for local fishermen is downstream, where slightly stunned fish end up after passing through the whirlpool. 
The first two units of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station were launched in November 1941 and January 1942 - the war and energy famine began. Moscow defense enterprises and machine-building plants needed electricity. 
In 1945-50 Four units of the hydroelectric power station were successively put into operation, and in 1998 and 2002, two of the six hydroelectric units were reconstructed.
It is difficult to find a worker in the hall - the entire process is automated. 
The control panel provides round-the-clock monitoring of the systems and units of the hydroelectric power station. 
On July 30, 1955, the Uglich and Rybinsk hydroelectric complexes were put into commercial operation, forming Cascade No. 1 of Mosenergo. In 1993, the company changed its name to DOJSC "Cascade of Verkhnevolzhskiye HPPs". 
The building retains original chandeliers from the 1940s. 
The workers are joking. 
Bloggers tweet. 
There is a beautiful picture in the turbine room, giving general idea about hydroelectric power station. 
And now a trip to Mologa.
From the central Rybinsk pier by boat to Mologa it takes more than two hours to travel along the Rybinsk reservoir and the first point is the locks. 
The gate at the lower level closes, it takes about 10 minutes for the lock to be filled with water, and we enter the reservoir area. 
For seagulls, the process of filling or filling the sluice with water is most beneficial - stunned fish are easier to catch - just like for fishermen near a hydroelectric power station. 
Due to the current shallowing of the reservoir by almost 2.5 meters, the number of steamships has decreased and the lock staff welcomes rare visitors. 
We pass by the monument to Mother Volga.
Kamennikovsky Peninsula.
While we sail, we listen to the history of Mologa from local history keepers and local historians. 
To create the Rybinsk reservoir with an area of 4,580 km2, it was necessary to resettle, in addition to Mologa, more than 600 villages. Filling of the reservoir lasted longer than planned - it was flooded to the required level only in the high-water year of 1947. This happened because during the war water was released to the lowest levels to maximize electricity production. 
Soon a strip of land and several stones appeared on the horizon.
Mologa has a rich history - the city was the same age as Moscow, and in the chronicle it is mentioned as the city that saved Yuri Dolgoruky during the war with prince of Kyiv Izyaslav Mstislavovich. Then the squad of Kievites burned all the cities of the Suzdal principality, and Mologa misfired - the Volga rose and flooded all the surrounding fields and roads. As a result, the Kiev squad went home, and the founder of Moscow was saved.
Apparently, there is some kind of evil irony of fate in the fact that the first chronicle mention of this city almost completely coincides in meaning with the last mention of Mologa - with the only difference that the grateful descendants of Dolgoruky flooded Mologa itself.
According to the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, in 1936, 6,100 people lived in it, it was a small town built up mainly with wooden buildings. 
Before reaching a couple of kilometers to the place where the highest point of Mologa appeared, we transfer to a boat - the fairway does not allow the steamer to go further. 
The boat approaches the shore very carefully - in some areas the water depth does not even reach half a meter. 
Mologa was famous not only as a trade and transport hub of the country, but also as a producer of butter and cheese, which was even supplied to London.
Previously, the view of Mologa from our place was like this. The photo was taken before 1937. 
Now it is a bare island with thousands of scattered bricks and remnants of everyday life. 
Before filling the reservoir, it is mandatory to clear its bed from buildings. Wooden houses are either dismantled and transported to a new location, or burned. In Mologa, most of the residents dismantled their houses, built rafts from them (so that they could later reassemble the house) and, having loaded everything that could be taken away onto them, they floated down the river to a new place of residence.
People were forced to leave their stone houses, the graves of their relatives and friends.
Stone buildings were destroyed to the ground, and this was done long before the reservoir was filled. Everything valuable that could be useful on the farm and could be carried away was taken away. 
We can confidently assume that by 1940 the resettlement was practically completed, since local Soviet authorities took a very direct part in the resettlement process - they issued exit certificates, on the basis of which the settlers received financial assistance from the state. In total, about 130 thousand people were overpopulated.
Yaroslavskaya street was then the most high point city, which this year poked its head out of the water. 
Yaroslavskaya street now. 
The pride of the Mologans of that time was the tower designed by the brother of Fyodor Dostoevsky. 
Mologsky district, the city of Mologa and 6 village councils of the Mologsky district, falling into the flood zone, were officially liquidated by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR on December 20, 1940. 
Rumors that more than 300 people drowned without leaving the city are not true. Sit for months among clean field and waiting for the water to come is a surprisingly strange and painful way of committing suicide. The Rybinsk Reservoir has a small backwater, but a large volume, and, accordingly, fills quite slowly - a few centimeters per day. This is not a tsunami or even an ordinary flood; you can get away from the rising reservoir simply on foot and without much effort. 
It was possible to continue walking, but it was nearing sunset and we had to urgently set sail before it got dark. 
By a fatal coincidence, the coat of arms of the city of Mologa, approved back in 1778, seemed to predict its flooding - the earthen rampart in the “azure field” ended up being the Rybinsk Reservoir. 
In memory of the ghost town, a museum was opened in 1995 in Rybinsk, which became known as the Museum of the Mologsky Region, and former Mologans gather every year to honor the memory of their sunken homeland.
And don’t believe the pictures on the Internet showing that something has survived at the site of Mologa - there is no bell tower, like in Kalyazin, or domes sticking out of the water - only stones and a homemade monument remind of the ancient Russian city that once stood here. ..
The report partially used photographs of the Mologsky region museum and from my personal archive from 2006 (hydroelectric power station above).
O-37-65-B Map of Volgostroy. Yaroslavl region, Mologsky district. Compiled from the filming of Sredvolgostroy and Molog. M.T. Section of the relief every 2 m. Work print (blue, blueprint).
Mologa- since 1777 county town Mologsky district in Yaroslavl province. The city was 120 km away. from Yaroslavl and 32 km. from Rybinsk at the confluence of the Mologa river and the Volga. The first mention in chronicles is 1149 (2 years later than Moscow).
Map of the city of Mologa
In the 1930s, there were more than 900 houses in the city, about a hundred of which were made of stone, and there were 200 shops and shops in and around the shopping area. The population did not exceed 7 thousand people.
Neighborhood Mologa
In the Mologsky district at the beginning of the 20th century, there were 714 villages and 933 land communities. The total population of the county at the beginning of the 20th century was 130 thousand people. List of populated places in Mologsky district as of 1901 .
Flooding of the city
On September 14, 1935, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution to begin construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes. The height of the water surface above sea level of the Rybinsk reservoir was supposed to be 98 m. But subsequently, on January 1, 1937, this value was increased to 102 m, which made it possible to significantly increase the generation capacity of the Rybinsk hydroelectric station. Mologa was at a level of 98 m, so as a result of these adjustments it fell into the flood zone.
The resettlement of city and county residents (a total of about 130 thousand people) began in 1936 and continued until 1940. In the fall of 1940, the Volga channel was blocked and on April 13, 1941, filling of the reservoir began, which continued until 1947.
Volgostroy- a special construction and installation department of the NKVD-USSR, which was engaged in the construction of waterworks on the Volga River. The main labor force during construction were prisoners Volgolaga. In the 30s, Volgostroy topographers carried out detailed topographic surveys of the area, which was planned for flooding. The site contains just such a map worksheet related to Mologa and its northern environs.
Former attractions of Mologa
The archived version contains both the original map sheet and two sheets with superimposed driving directions for the Rybinsk Reservoir.
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. Indigenous people continued to live her normal life.
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 the giant thicket of the Rybinsk Reservoir was filled, 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 cultivated arable land for centuries, more than 30 thousand hectares of highly productive pastures, more than 250 thousand hectares of mushroom and berry forests.
But the most heavy 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 with 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 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 Kalyazinskaya 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 At that time, the bell tower appears as a lighthouse.
IN Soviet era 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, but in the summer, during the Upper Volga religious procession, this is where the Upper Volga religious procession ends, 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. She was located on the spot former city 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.