In 1550, after a failed siege, the Russian army was resting near Kazan when the tsar’s attention was drawn to a hill at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga Rivers known as Kruglaya. Ivan decided to build a fortress there as part of his effort to seize the city. To keep his gambit secret, Ivan ordered that the fortress, along with towers, churches, and other buildings, be built in Uglich, hundreds of kilometers upstream. After construction was complete, each log was labeled, everything was disassembled, and, in the spring of 1551, it was all loaded on rafts and floated down the Volga. In preparation, Kruglaya had been cleared of trees so that when the rafts arrived, the structures could be reassembled. Just a month was needed to rebuild the fortress, which was named Sviyazhsk.
After Kazan fell in 1552, Ivan’s fortress became a major administrative and trade center. Still later, Sviyazhsk took on a religious character and became home for monks of the Trinity and Assumption monasteries as well as the sisters of the St. John the Baptist convent.
After 1917, the monasteries and convent were shut down, and most of the monks and priests were shot. Until 1948, the Assumption Monastery housed a political prison, and later a psychiatric hospital that held not only the mentally ill, but also political dissidents. In 1956, when the Kuibyshev Reservoir was first filled, much of Sviyazhsk was submerged, as the water level rose by more than 16 feet. The city then became a virtual island and its population began to decline. While in the sixteenth century the population had exceeded 4,000, after the waters rose just 500 permanent residents remained.
Today, the city, 30 miles from Kazan, is a state-run architecture and art museum covering about 150 acres and known as “Sviyazhsk, Old Island-City.” It is one of the world’s few cities that, in the twenty-first century, is almost entirely car-free – only Sviyazhsk’s residents (fewer than 200) are permitted to drive here. Tourists leave their vehicles at a lot near the park entrance and enter on foot via a stairway.
The first thing visitors see at the top of the stairs is Assumption (Uspensky) Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Near its walls, pirozhki vendors hawk their treats, and there is a wonderful view of the Volga from a nearby square.
Ludmila Yeliseyeva moved to Sviyazhsk in 1986 and remembers well how, during the winter, one had to walk for kilometers across the ice to collect firewood, or to buy bread and matches. The locals knew that they had better not get sick or die in the winter, as both the hospital and the cemetery were on the other side of the river, completely inaccessible.
Sviyazhsk’s revival began in 2010. Mintimer Shaimiev, President of Tatarstan (one of Russia’s federated republics), asked then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev not to extend his term, so that he could concentrate on the revival of Tatarstan’s two ancient cities: Bolgara and Sviyazhsk. Shaimiev then set up the Revival Foundation, to be funded equally from federal and republican budgets.
Officially categorized as a “rural settlement,” Sviyazhsk was nonetheless provided with urban infrastructure – electricity, natural gas, water, and sewers. Since 2010, some 88 families have been moved from old, dilapidated housing into new apartments.
Nadezhda Anisimova was among the lucky housing recipients. She recalls, with horror, how Sviyazhsk went without electricity until 1977, so there had been no refrigerators, televisions, or even lighting. People cooked with kerosene. There was no road from the mainland: supplies had to be laid in for the winter and spring. No one even dreamed that life could be better.
Artyom Silkin is one of those working to continue Sviyazhsk’s illustrious history into the future. He first visited here when he was in grade school and still remembers his early impressions: abandoned churches, patients from the psychiatric clinics wandering the streets, large stretches of unmown grass.
Later, grown up and living in Kazan, he was drawn to the idea of life in a smaller town. In 2007 he moved to Sviyazhsk and soon became an advisor to the town’s leadership. In 2008, he was elected the town’s leader, and in 2010 he was asked to head the museum.
Soon, tourists started to visit. Not all the locals welcomed this development. At first, many were unhappy that outsiders had entered their world. But when new infrastructure and facilities began to be built, people became more accepting of the changes, particularly when creation of the park brought jobs – employment being a constant challenge in smaller towns. The total restructuring of the local economy resulted in nearly 300 new jobs.
Today, the majority of local residents work in tourism. Strolling the island, you can see souvenir stands and small, private mini-zoos. Many locals work at the monasteries, museums, or in construction.
“Hiring remains a problem,” Silkin complains. “For example, museum workers are trained in Kazan at two places, the Institute of Culture and Kazan Federal University. But Sviyazhsk rarely attracts graduates. They are put off by the need to take a bus from Kazan, 90 minutes each way. That commute is typical in a place like Moscow, but not Kazan. So, many take the easy way out and switch fields.”
The Lazy Market, a favorite tourist spot and large employer, offers a taste of medieval Sviyazhsk, boasting a tea room, blini house, and treats such as local herbal concoctions, pine cone preserves, and dishes prepared over an open fire. At the Lazy Market, visitors are invited to don sixteenth- to nineteenth-century clothing and pose for photographs. Those who really want to get into the medieval spirit can shoot an arbalest or bow, or throw axes.
The market’s booths are always noisy. Potters make plates, spoons, whistles, and other decorative reproductions, and there is the constant clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer against the anvil. Yevgeny Ivanov is the technical leader and teacher at the craft shop known as Potter’s House. He was among those with the needed expertise invited here eight years earlier by the Revival Foundation.
“At the start, like many others, I saw this as just a lark,” Ivanov recalls. “In the city, everything was dug up by archeologists and builders, and there were few tourists. We set up our workshops, got things up and running, hired assistants, and started production. After the first summer season, most of the craftsmen went home. Only the blacksmith and I, and our assistants, stayed.”
Ivanov no longer thinks about leaving. The island has become his home. He acknowledges that many of his employees have left because of the low wages. It is easier for him and the other master craftsmen to make a living, since they can make money selling reproductions and souvenirs. For him and his colleagues, tourists are a blessing.
Back when the island was slowly dying, you could buy a home for a song. Today, Sviyazhsk is an established brand in Tatarstan, combining the spirit of the past with a modern lifestyle. In place of roads there are wide sidewalks, and run-down Soviet era cottages have given way to buildings that evoke the nineteenth century.
As Museum Director Silkin explains, there are barely any plots of land to be sold in Sviyazhsk, and there are major obstacles to new construction: not only is there a shortage of available land, but, in addition to the usual zoning hurdles, archeologists have to give the go-ahead before building plans are approved. Coins dating from the seventeenth century, for example, are still regularly found here.
Sviyazhsk has worked actively with UNESCO since shortly after Assumption Cathedral and the Assumption Monastery were added to the list of World Heritage sites. A plan has been developed to provide for both the preservation of the sites’ historic structures and the creation of satisfactory living conditions for residents. But the fact that many buildings have protected status due to their historic significance can present certain problems.
Handicapped access is not available in the town as it has no recognized disabled residents. Tourists with mobility challenges were only provided with dedicated tour buses in 2016. Pavel Kokcharyov, a Russian citizen with a disability who faced similar challenges in his travels around the nation, is credited with the idea. Andrei Savin supported his friend’s initiative and became one of the coordinators of a project run by Integration, a regional civic organization for people with disabilities.
The project works with various groups, but Sviyazhsk remains especially difficult for those with mobility challenges, as there is not a single wheelchair ramp on the island.
“We regularly raise this question in the tourism committee, but they send us from one organization to another,” Savin says. “Since all of the main tourist sites are protected, the powers that be shrug their shoulders and say there is nothing to be done. Although, for example, ramps have been installed at the Kazan Kremlin.”
As a result, tours for disabled tourists tend to be somewhat abbreviated. Yet Integration coordinators are hopeful that the city will one day become more accessible.
There are other problems as well. The policeman assigned to the island is also responsible for areas beyond Sviyazhsk. When the occasional violation occurs, he is not necessarily nearby.
Sviyazhsk has no drugstore, clinic, or emergency medical facility. There is only one office staffed by a medical technician on the island, and it is a 15-minute drive to buy medicine. Residents joke that getting sick is for wimps and whiners and jealously guard their health.
Walking around Sviyazhsk, one also can’t help notice how few younger residents there are. Schooling is provided for all children, kindergarten through ninth grade, in the same building. Thereafter, students enroll at schools in nearby cities, such as Kazan. Zelenodolsk, and Innopolis, and also tend to stay on after graduation. Sviyazhsk is slowly dying.
Twenty-year-old Kristina Shakhova finished primary school and moved to Kazan, where she found work as an instructor at a horse rental business. She returns home only in the summer, when the tourist season starts up.
“Many of my friends do this,” Shakhova says. “There is nothing for young people on the island. There are no clubs or activities. In the evenings, most just get together in groups and stroll the city. There’s nowhere to work either. And I’ll hold my tongue on the topic of career growth.”
Darya Mikhailina also works in Sviyazhsk in the summer, during the tourist season. The rest of the year she lives in Kazan. Her grandmother and grandfather, Tatyana and Yevgeny Golubtsov, bought a small place on the island around thirty years ago, and it has been a favorite retreat for the whole family ever since.
“We usually come in the summer,” Mikhailina says, “since our place only has an oven for heat and trundle bed. It’s damp and chilly during the cold months. But I sometimes come anyway for a few days in the winter just to escape the city’s hustle and bustle. All the more since electricity was installed. Warm sheets and heaters save us from the cold.”
During the academic year Mikhailina studies law at a management institute in Kazan, and in the summer she works in the Lazy Market, teaching tourists to shoot arbalests and bows and to throw axes and spears.
“Yes, Sviyazhsk’s young people want to leave for bigger cities, since every stone and person here is familiar,” she says. “But for me this is a special place, it soothes the soul. If there had been no revival, if the churches and Assumption Monastery had not been rebuilt, no one would know of it. I understand why my grandmother and grandfather settled here; they did not pick the island, it picked them. I am certain that this city will live on in my heart.”
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