In 1430, in the lands of the ancient, almost epic country of Bjarmaland (a civilization centered around Perm and the shores of the river Dvina and the White Sea), which for a millennium had traded with Persia and Khoresm (present day Central Asia), the Russian salt industry appeared along the Kama river.
Over time, the town founded there – Solikamsk (which means, literally, “salt of the Kama river”) – gained the name “salt capital” and developed into one of the most beautiful of Russian towns. In the 17th century, local craftsmen built stone churches without equal in the richness of their decor. The intricate carvings of their porticoes and moldings were a joyful, resounding embodiment of the Russian Soul. In fact, for someone interested in comprehending this mys- terious essence, the churches and palaces of Solikamsk offer no less enlightenment than the famous Rostov kremlin or the wooden splendors of Kizhi.
Thankfully, the city’s most valuable historic monuments survived the ravages of the Soviet era. But the fairytale town itself has practically disappeared, the center having been built over with scruffy five-story apartment blocks.
And yet, the losses are still reversible. If the city had a specific development plan, aimed at reclaiming the riches of its past, it would in time become famous not only in Russia, but in the wider world. For there is also a lush wilderness here – sunsets over the Usolka river are simply unbelievable, and Solikamsk is surrounded by a number of beautiful old towns: Usolye, Cherdyn, Nyrob. Yet there seems little hope of a renaissance. Even back in 1916, a travel guide to the city wrote: “In the progeny of Solikamsk we see few signs of inspiration, enterprise or concern for their town. Does this not evidence a wasting away of local residents’ spirits?”
Today, in the very center of Solikamsk, the lace Krestovozdvizhensky (Risen Cross) Church (1698) is dying. Parishioners began to renovate it, took off the roof and then ran out of money. Ask whomever you like: the eparchiate of the church, the department of culture or the city administration, and each points their finger at someone else, trying to sort out exactly whose responsibility this is. There is no settling the dispute: in December of 2005, the head of the city was convicted of exceeding his authority and to this day the city is between leaders, which only aggravates the predilection for disorder.
The local paper announces gleefully that “the central square has donned a new asphalt coat.” Yet in the center there is not a single acceptable restaurant. Even in the hotel there is nowhere to get a bite to eat, yet the cost of the room does include an adult movie channel. In the evenings, the hotel turns into something like a seaside bordello.
The city’s singular, readily apparent achievement seems to be the development of an inexpensive taxi trade.
In point of fact, the difficulty with Solikamsk’s preservation efforts lies in the fact that only cultural workers and religious leaders are concerned with turning this commonplace regional center into a renowned city. And both groups are small and act independently of one another. At present, they are distracted by legal proceedings regarding property transfer. The church has staked a claim to the recently-restored Bogoyavlensky (Epiphany) Church, which has belonged to the museum fund since the 1930s.
Nelli Savenkova, head of the historical department of the Solikamsk Museum of Local Culture, was indignant on the issue of property transfer: “The eparchiate is acting rather unpleasantly. Generally speaking, we have, to a limited degree, been fulfilling their missionary work for many years. Just where was a Soviet person able to find out anything about Christianity? Basically, in museums, where museum workers saved sacred objects under the pretext of their being elements in an exhibition on atheism. And now they bang us upside the head, saying what bad people we are.
“One old woman came here, one of their activists, and demanded that we return the church to parishioners. And I said to her, ‘And where were you, my dear, when they closed it? I dare say in the Komsomol?’ And she replied, ‘That may have been, but now I am praying for my sins!’
“They are rushing to break what they did not succeed in breaking in their youth, steamrolling over everything with no concern about what will happen next. In principle, we don’t need this church, but we know what will happen. They will paint the walls with oil paint, bring in woven rugs and wash basins. And they will wash the icons with soap! ...People here are not ready for Orthodoxy.”
In truth, the city’s active churches are empty even on church holidays. Previously, there was but one parish in a neighboring village, which has since been divided among six newly-opened churches. Yet there have been few new members, and young people stay away from churches altogether. Perhaps they are scared off by the brochures that declaim the Beatles’ “diabolical White Album,” or perhaps it is that the priest is unfamiliar. The priests in Perm region shuffle from place to place, like cards in a deck, and parishioners can hardly remember their names. I asked a priest, who requested anonymity, about the problems with growing a church in the city, and he replied, “I have only recently come here. But as soon as I arrived, I noticed people’s coldness toward churches. A cross had fallen from a church into the middle of a road and no one even bothered to drag it off to the side. What does this say? That the spirituality is poorly developed. The morale of this city is quite low; no one even gives up their seat for a pregnant woman. It is because people did not receive a proper spiritual upbringing from an educated priesthood.”
“So what is to be done?” I asked. “Will there be a renaissance?”
“Well, why do you think they sent me here?!” the priest said, smiling.
The Pharaoh’s Relations
On the eve of Solikamsk’s 575th anniversary in 2005, Permskiye Novosti listed the city’s basic contributions to Russian culture: first, in the 17th century the icon painter Fyodor Zubov was born here; second, in 1755 the city founded the country’s first botanical garden; third, this is the home of the surprising artist Mikhail Mikhailovich Potapov.
The article was titled, “Ancient Roots,” and, as to Potapov, the headline was justified: last summer he turned 102. Potapov lives in his private apartment-museum, located in a concrete five-story building on the edge of the city. He does not paint any more – he can no longer see; his hearing is bad and he suffers from sclerosis. Yet he is constantly accompanied by his student and heir, Sergei Ivanovich Lapin, a middle-aged fellow with a pleasant appearance who looks after the aged artist, protects his art collection, receives guests and recounts Mikhail Mikhailovich’s unusual life history.
“In 1913, when he was a nine-year-old student at the gymnasium, Mikhail Mikhailovich opened up a book of Egyptian history, and he suddenly had the distinct impression that he had already seen all of this in the flesh,” Lapin said. “With time, he became acquainted with members of the Kyiv Theosophical Society, who believed in the possibility of reincarnation, and through them found an explanation for his sufferings. Here you see two photographs: a bust made during the lifetime of Akhenaton [Amehotep IV, who ruled Egypt from 1352-1336 BC] and a portrait of the young Mikhail Mikhailovich. Quite a resemblance, no?”
The basic theme of Potapov’s art is ancient Egypt and, first and foremost, a portrait gallery of the pharaohs. These are not stone masks of ancient bas-reliefs, but lively, smiling faces, as if drawn from living subjects (see samples at russianlife.net).
Lapin the disciple speaks of Potapov with genuine respect and even, it seems, with a religious tremor. During my visit, some workers showed up to discuss details of their renovation work in the apartment. They proposed removing the homemade, pseudo-Egyptian arches in the entryway (the palm crowns of the columns were made from some sort of plastic vases), but Lapin replied: “All that was sanctified by Mikhail Mikhailovich’s vision should be left alone.”
Everything in Potapov’s apartment reminds one of the artist’s fervent hobby: Egyptology. Even the tiny bathroom is done over in Egyptian style. We sit in a room whose walls are totally covered with the works of The Master (which is the only way they refer to Potapov in this city). Nearby, lying drowsily on the divan, lies the artist, looking more like an exhibit in his personal museum: an ancient, grey-haired man under a portrait of a still older ancient Egyptian. A quietly elegant salon mirror produced in 1904 would be hidden away in some museum of local culture, but this specimen is a living witness to balls in the Noble Assembly. Next to his bed, like a tour guide, sits the loyal Sergei Ivanovich, continuing his story:
“About 20 years ago, when Mikhail Mikhailovich and I had only just become acquainted, I told him how, when I was a boy, I saw a drawing in Science and Life of a reconstructed tomb of Tutankamen. It so inspired me that I sat down and built a highly-exact model, with all its murals and details. And Mikhail Mikhailovich confessed that, at the same age, he himself had built models of sarcophagi and rolled up bandages to make toy mummies.”
Potapov settled in Solikamsk in 1984, made friends with local museum workers and they put in a good word for him with city authorities. “An amazing person!” the authorities said, and they offered him an apartment and a hall in the city art gallery. He accepted both and, over time, became one of the main attractions in this little city. For the last few years he has lived with his devoted follower. As Lapin says, “This is how the two of us live, in our little monastery, all the more so that Mikhail Mikhailovich holds the office of archdeacon.” It turns out that Potapov, who since childhood has believed that he is the reincarnation of a close relative of Pharaoh Akhenaton, served as a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church for 30 years, painting icons and church interiors.
At first this all seems a bit crazy. But then I begin to understand that before me is not some kind of obstinate heretic, but a truly affecting individual, who has lived a very long life and cannot deny the central dream of his youth. He has mustered all he has to reconcile this dream with the strict canons of Orthodoxy, comparing the solar essence of the god Aton with the Christian axiom that “God is light.” He longed for his dream and said that if he could somehow be in Akhetaton, a city believed to have existed more than 3000 years ago, he would die of happiness. When he turned 86, he was invited to Egypt and arrived at the site where the great city once stood and saw with his own eyes how decrepit it had become. And they asked him why he did not die on the spot, as he had promised. And Mikhail Mikhailovich spread his arms and said, “I was talking about Ancient Egypt...” Of course, his was an unrealizeable dream. But who knows. There is no law that says it could never happen...
Gingerbread Mannequins
A meandering dirt road leads along the river Kama to the town of Usolye, which in 2006 celebrated its 400th anniversary. I once read that the town was “unbelievably beautiful and has no equal.” But that was in a book with 50-year-old photographs. Who knows what this unequalled beauty will look like today?
Through the trees I can make out a church with a headless bell tower. The town’s residential area (mainly wooden buildings) is located a bit further out, while along the river are old estates of the industrialist Stroganovs. It turns out that the sights are not simply dreary, but frightening: the old part of the town looks as if just yesterday the occupants were shelled into leaving, and the only thing missing is dusty armored vehicles on the roads. Along both sides of the street are half-crumbling skeletons of private homes pierced by volunteer birch trees, and two-story salt warehouses. There are no signs of life, except for a solitary fisherman standing on the riverbank. Of the dozens of buildings in one of the most unique, historic towns in Russia, just one church and about five homes survive. The rest were abandoned in the 1950s (the town just barely escaped being subsumed by construction of the Kamsky reservoir) and to this day are slowly, but very surely, collapsing. The backdrop for this romantic disintegration is the smokestacks of a chemical factory in Beryozniki, a town situated on the other side of the Kama river.
Leaving behind this uninhabited wasteland, I walked around the huge building of the Stroganov palace and stumbled across an exceptionally friendly group sitting around a table on the platform of the river stop. The locals looked exactly as they would have looked to ethnographers in the 19th century: the men had beards and wore bast shoes and white shirts, while the women were in dresses and colorful sarafans. On the table was a samovar, some vodka and a jar of marinated pickles. I was calmed when I saw that some of the company was wearing suits and jeans, and that their singing was accompanied not by a grey-bearded minstrel, but a fellow with a guitar (who, I learned later, just happened to be a legend of the Perm rock scene). It was soon explained that these people having a good time were Usolye museum workers, celebrating the day of the flowing of the spring waters and at the same time celebrating the arrival of a new tile stove in the palace.
In the middle of the emptiness of this old city there are two cultural institutions: the Usolye City Museum and an affiliate of the Beryozniki Regional Culture Museum. Each has their own conception of Usolye’s path toward renewal. Those who were here singing songs were the progressive employees of the Usolye Museum. At the head of their table sat the director, Stanislav Valeryevich Khorobykh – a bearded, 35-year-old. The museum, which was closed in 1954 and only reopened in 2003, is tightly bound up with this fellow’s enthusiastic character.
“What we got were empty walls without any sort of museum collection,” Khorobykh said, “It was a ruin. But, thanks to the quality of our management, 20,000 people visited this empty building last year. Tourists come here simply to look at the famous Stroganov Palaces; specialists come for scientific seminars. In fact, the first seminar filled the hall, despite the fact that it was -40º C outside and the heating was not yet working in the building. There was one incident where a professor stopped his lecture so that he could warm up by the stove. So far, we have received R3.5 million in grants for restoration. We also don’t have any problem with foreign guests. The Italian Diplomatic Corps came here for New Year’s, British students do field trips here and we introduce them to the real Russian countryside. Everything is working out beautifully.”
But Korobykh’s main project, already begun, is an interactive video installation in the halls of the palace. In the future it will “transfer two-dimensional images from a flat screen to holographic, three-dimensional images in the hall.” They say that the vice governor has promised a laser gun for the project. Still, I am writing this all based on the words of the director alone, since I was unable to personally evaluate the installation. Despite the fact that I came to Usolye twice during working hours, I was unable to enter the museum both times. The first time, the staff were celebrating the stove; the second time, they were racing about the town, weighed down with accordions and all manner of traditional costumery, entertaining American guests. In short, they had swiftly acquired the “new management techniques.”
Not far from the progressive palace stands the modest “Manor House,” which is connected with the town of Beryozniki’s cultural institutions. It has been around for 19 years and it has, like all museums of its type, darkened framed portraits, silver table services and candelabras. Yet the house gives the impression of something living: the wooden floors squeak underfoot; you can smell the smoke from the recently lit fireplace. The director is Lyubov Babina, a very homey-looking, 40-something woman who immediately invited me to have some tea in the garden.
“We have a pleasant and fine home,” Babina said. “We work hard to help visitors feel its spirit. We celebrate maslenitsa and Easter, put up a beautiful tree for Christmas, employees dress up in costumes and there are activities going on in every room. Children receive a healthy dose of spirituality. There are also the live entertainment programs “Tea and Samovars” and “Gingerbread Mannequins.” And people can hold wedding receptions here, with the young couple arriving in a horse-drawn carriage... and everyone leaves with the impression not that they were in a museum, but guests in a home.
“We would like to develop further, for example to begin producing gingerbread, especially since I previously was the head of a bakery. I have potential. I write poems, love to draw, sing and am quite a good cook. Yet, no matter how many times I have been to the city administration to ask for more space, they give us nothing. My active brain is moving forward, but they don’t understand me. They are looking for investors and want to sell off all of this. But what does money have to do with it? You should feel a warmth in your soul from throwing your heart into something.”
When I asked both directors how the two museums work together on the creative front, they were each silent for a moment, scratched their heads and then said with feeling, “Not at all.”
It is a conflict of civilizations. It is understood that these days cultural institutions can survive only if they have leadership similar to Stanislav Valeryevich, who know the meaning of “management,” “instruments” and “infrastructural primacy.” But, on the other hand, if foreign guests are interested in true Russian reality, then they can find it in the female collective of this authentic museum of local culture, which entertains its guests with gingerbread mannequins. Possibly, such simple-hearted creativity is what is truly exotic in modern Russia’s hinterlands. RL
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.
Russian Life 73 Main Street, Suite 402 Montpelier VT 05602
802-223-4955
[email protected]
