Two Cities: A Tale

Have you ever been to a city with a river running through it?

Of course you have. But have you ever been to a city, where, because of historical circumstances, the river has become an international border, dividing the city in two? Imagine for a moment that Paris used to be one city, but then split in two, with France on one side of the Seine and Germany on the other. Or imagine Budapest being split once again into Buda and Pest. Nonsense, you say.

And yet, this is exactly what happened to the Estonian town of Narva, founded on the left bank of the Narva river, and the Russian town of Ivangorod, which sits on the right bank.

The two towns have changed hands throughout history, now in Sweden, now in Lithuania, now in Estonia, now in Russia. But they always traveled through history as a pair, residing in the same country or Empire. Then, in 1991, the Soviet behemoth stumbled, fell, and Narva and Ivangorod were set into opposing camps. On May 1, 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union (having joined NATO a month previous), modest Narva became the European city closest to Russia’s second capital, St. Petersburg, just 147 kilometers away. Ivangorod, across the river, stayed in Russian hands.

It is a rather unassuming international border. After all, the Narva river is less than 200 meters wide at this point. Or, as historians are fond of writing, the two towns are just “a gunshot away” from one another. Not a propitious fact, but then let us start from the very beginning.

Border Towns

The oldest known inhabitants of this land – in the middle Stone Age – built themselves wooden houses on the left shore of the river, where Narva stands today. In the Novgorod Chronicle, Narva is first mentioned in 1171, as the town of Rugodiv. Ivangorod is the younger sibling, having been founded in 1492, when Ivan III (“the Great”), Prince of Moscow, built a fortress here – one of Rus’ first defensive fortifications. Ivangorod is also mentioned in 15th century German documents, which call the town “counter-Narva.”

In the early part of the 13th century, Estonia was taken over by the Danes (1220-1346), who transformed Narva – then a fishing village named Narvia – into a stronghold between northern Estonia and Russia. The first Danish fortress here was probably made almost entirely of wood. Russians burned it down at the end of the 13th century.

In the mid-14th century, the region became part of the Livonian Order. Then, two hundred years later, during the Livonian War, Narva and Ivangorod were captured by Russia, which held them from 1558-1581. Narva and Ivangorod were occupied by Sweden from 1581-1590 and 1612-1704, and they were turned them into strong fortresses on the Russian border. The bastions built then have partially survived to this day.

As a result of Peter the Great’s victory over Sweden in the Northern War, Narva and Ivangorod fell under Russian rule in 1704. The two towns were actually unified into one, with Ivangorod becoming “the Ivanovskaya side” of Narva. Russian rule over Narva lasted until November 28, 1918, when Narva was occupied by Germany during the allied intervention against the Bolshevik revolution.

In 1919, both Narva and Ivangorod were part of an independent Estonia, which ended in July 1940, when Estonia (along with Lithuania and Latvia) was forcibly absorbed into the USSR. Just over a year later, Germany again occupied the towns. They were liberated in 1944, and the border between Soviet Russia and Soviet Estonia was established along the river Narva. Thus, when Estonia regained its independence in 1991, the international border separated the two towns for the first time into two different countries.

United by Vodka

Throughout history, Narva and Ivangorod have always lived as a husband and wife, fighting and then reconciling. But they have always lived together, even today, as they find themselves on different sides of the barbed wire that guards this international border. Every day, Narvanians go to Ivangorod and Ivangorodians go to Narva, joking as they go: “I guess I’ll go take a walk to NATO!”

It only takes a half-hour to cross the Russian-Estonian border. The walk is all downhill from the bus station in Ivangorod. There is an exquisite view here of the Narva ramparts, built by the Swedes in the 14th-15th centuries, now dotted with Russian fishermen, who are happy to sell you fresh pike, perch, and, when they are in season, lamprey – considered a delicacy by locals on both sides of the river.

After the transit point, you come onto a bridge full of vans and trucks – many countries, especially those in Scandinavia, use Estonia to transit into Russia. The bridge is quite interesting; in Soviet times it was officially baptized The Bridge of Friendship, joining the Republic of Estonia with Leningrad Region. Before the river was a border, daring youths would jump from the bridge into the raging river – a feat all the more difficult because, not only is the river 20 meters below the bridge, but there are huge stones to avoid. Today, no one jumps from the bridge. Anyone brave (or foolish) enough to do so would face hours of interrogation from border guards.

According to official statistics, some 4,500 persons travel from Ivangorod to Narva every day. That is 30 percent of Ivangorodians and more than five percent of Narva’s population of 70,000. Russians cross the border, carrying into Estonia vodka, cigarettes, and clothes, which they sell quickly and at a nice markup – Russian prices are lower than those in Estonia. Such trafficking helps Ivangorodians make ends meet: the average salary in Ivangorod is just R2-3,000 ($70-100) per month, so smuggling is widespread.

“I walk to Narva every day,” said Yelena, a barmaid at café in Ivangorod. “I take along sweaters and vodka. We live badly. What can I say? Young people either become drunkards or leave to study in Petersburg, from where no one wants to return home. Pensioners make up a little less than half of [Ivangorod’s] population of 12,000.”

In Yelena’s café, they are playing an Estonian radio station. Meanwhile, Narva’s Russian-speaking residents watch mostly Russian channels; few Russian Narvanians have learned Estonian, and fewer still like Estonian TV. There are very few ethnic Estonians in Narva, so all signs in the town are in two languages.

Narvanians walk to Ivangorod in the same numbers every day as those going in the opposite direction. Their purpose is to buy the same things – alcohol, tobacco and lower-priced food. A typical purchase consists of a liter of vodka, a box of cigarettes and cereals. In the last few years, businessmen, counting on shoppers from Narva, have opened enough food stores in the Russian town to feed three or four Ivangorods (or one Narva).

Not surprisingly, this cross-border trade is the town’s major source of income. Of Ivangorod’s 5,000 employed, some 2,400 work in services, while just over 1,000 work in industry. The latter has been on a gradual decline since 1992. Today, the only flourishing factory is one started in 2000 – it produces alcohol. Everything here, it seems, turns on vodka.

And what about Narva? On the left bank of the river, the standard of living is a bit better, but still quite far from prosperous. German journalists traveled around the new EU countries in 2003 and published an article in Hamburger Abendblatt under the headline, “Narva: A Look into the European Abyss.” “When Estonia joins the EU next year,” they wrote, “Narva will probably be the ugliest and the most unkempt town of the new Europe.”

German journalists may have laid it on too thick, but the fact remains that neither of these divorced spouses are doing very well. Outwardly, Ivangorod is the least attractive. The main street, ulitsa Gagarina, is lined with two-story houses, a dilapidated Palace of Culture, small shops, a food and clothing market... and that’s about it. Narva, meanwhile, has modern supermarkets and clean streets. But external appearances can be deceiving. Both towns suffer from high unemployment rates, low salaries and bleak economic futures.

It is never easy living on the frontier.

Selling the Fortresses

Narva and Ivangorod might have remained a province “forgotten by people and God,” if not for their impressive historical past, which lives on in the form of the awesome fortresses situated here. Both towns dream wildly of developing tourism, yet neither has been able to get moving forward.

Still, there is plenty for tourists to see here.

“In the Northwest, there is nothing else like this,” said Gennady Popov, director of the Ivangorod Fortress-Museum. (Popov, by the way, lives in Narva and works in Ivangorod.) “In Koporye, the fortress is a tiny, puny little thing, not to mention Staraya Ladoga. There is no other fortress like ours anywhere in Russia. Yet it does need to be restored. In 1994, when restoration work was stopped, we needed $5 million for 10 years of work. Today we would need even more, because back then they did not do conservation. The state will never allocate that amount of money.”

But even in its current state, the fortress is impressive: fortified walls several meters thick, with churches inside the walls. Visitors are transported centuries back in time.

Tour guide Sergei Nikitin speaks with evident pride of the Ivangorod fortress. “There are known cases, when, early in the 20th century, Narva grammar-school students never returned from explorations of the fortress’s passageways – so little had they been studied.” He points to a beautiful church. “This is Assumption Church; Catherine the Great came here. The son of the poet Pushkin, Alexander Alexandrovich, was commander of the fortress regiment here; one of Pushkin’s ancestors was governor of this fortress. The lives of many great people are connected to this fortress.”

We walk to a redoubt on the fortress, where guns once fired on attackers. An Estonian flag flutters in the breeze. A Russian flag also once flew here. But its flagpole is now naked. The flag, Nikitin says, not entirely convincingly, is being restored. Others say the flag was simply stolen.

Later, Nikitin recalled how he found an article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta with a photo of Vladimir Putin visiting the fortress in 1992. “He then worked in Petersburg City Hall and came here. This is my, it could be said, scientific discovery,” he jokes.

One cannot help thinking that a plaque with “Putin Was Here” is just around the corner. Anything to promote the fortress.

Artists are in fact trying to help the struggling Russian town, promoting its tourism potential. Last year, the Mariinsky Theatre performed the opera Prince Igor in the Ivangorod fortress.

“This didn’t do anything for the museum,” Popov said. “Tickets were $75, so they brought about 200 people from Petersburg themselves. For us, it didn’t do anything. Except five biotoilets remained after their visit. Besides, I think that for Prince Igor, the Fortress of Ivangorod is not a suitable decoration. He was a pagan, yet the opera was performed with Orthodox churches in the background.”

The Mariinsky’s press officer, Oksana Tokranova took another view. “Such fortresses as the one in Ivangorod are unique,” she said. “All over the world, they are used as stages for performances. At Prince Igor, during the performance of the opera, real horses grazed, crosses were burned, the feeling from what was happening was incredible.”

This year, the Mariinsky will be back – to perform the ballet The Fountain of Bakhchisarai in the Ivangorod fortress. Popov grumbled his disapproval. “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai should be staged in the Crimea,” he said. “For our fortress, Boris Godunov would be more appropriate – he is the one who stormed it.”

But Putin and Godunov alone cannot develop tourism. Real action is needed, not stop-gap or ad hoc benefit performances.

Deputy head of the Ivangorod municipality, Alexei Shantsev, said the main obstacle to tourism is geographic: the city is located in the border zone. “It is impossible to enter the city impromptu,” he said. “[A foreigner] has to inform the authorities of his visit 10 days prior and get a permit. We need less control. We have been working with European partners, for example, with the Finnish town of Kotka. We would like for Finnish tourists to be able to visit us by sea. [The Narva river empties into the Gulf of Finland just 14 km away.] Also, the lack of infrastructure is an obstacle: there is just one working hotel in town, Vityaz. It was built in 1980, for the Olympics. It has just 60 rooms. These combined problems scare investors off, since their investments would not likely have a swift return.”

The Narva fortress, across the river, is no less picturesque. It houses the Narva Museum, with exhibits on the Middle Ages and the era of Peter the Great. In addition, the castle has one modern collectable which is slowly gaining in historic value. It is the monument to Vladimir Lenin which used to stand in the center of Narva. After Estonia won its independence in 1991, town authorities did not have the nerve to destroy their Lenin, so they moved him to the fortress. And there the stone leader stands today, pointing toward Ivangorod’s medieval walls, or maybe just toward Russia.

Not all that is of interest in Narva is from antiquity. For instance, there is a bilingual memorial plaque celebrating the visit to the town by Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek. It was installed by the Society of Beer Lovers Named For The Good Soldier Svejk, Hasek’s best-known character. The plaque reads: “‘On the corner of May street I saw a lovely scene. A policeman was trying to pull apart a fight between a fat boar and a stray, bearded goat. That’s all I saw in Narva…’ (Jaroslav Hasek, December 1920)”

To be exact, unfortunately Jaroslav Hasek wrote very little about Narva. In addition to the phrase on the plaque, he wrote: “…They are driving us across the bridge, and two more kilometers through the town, which civil war has marked significantly. A long strip of unfilled trenches crosses the square – for the edification of posterity, and also for the purposes of sewage, which is here at about the same level of development as it was hundreds of years ago, when German crusaders were building this city.”

Not far from Hasek’s plaque, another writer is honored. Alexander Pushkin never visited the town, but a bust of him was unveiled here five years ago nonetheless. Locals joke that, if you look at the monument from the side, you can see that it resembles the mayor of Narva at the time the bust was installed.

But there is plenty more to Narva. In the town center, there is the City Hall, built in 1668-71 in the style of Dutch city palaces. In Soviet times, the City Hall housed the Palace of Pioneers (the Soviet youth organization). Today the building stands empty. But they are talking about moving the mayor’s office here soon.

And, of course, you can always bring a pole and drop a line in the Narva river to catch an international dinner. For 300 years, this river bound these married cities together, as war and history repeatedly conspired to change their nationality. Now the river stretches between the married couple, separating them like generations of accumulated differences. The divorce, it seems, is quite final. Visitations, however, will continue indefinitely.   RL