Video: Soviet Atlantis, or How and why hundreds of small towns were sent under water in Russia
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
On the Upper Volga there are the picturesque cities of Tver, Staritsa, Uglich, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, which tourists love to admire. Mologa could have been on this list. However, this city had a different fate - to die under water and get the nickname "Soviet Atlantis". Alas, the man-made sea - the gigantic Rybinsk reservoir - appeared due to the destruction of a city with a long history, as well as hundreds of other settlements.
The ancient city, which will be discussed, was built on the Mologo-Sheksna lowland, which got its name in honor of the local rivers Mologa and Sheksna flowing into the Volga. The first settlements on the banks of the Mologa River were mentioned in the 12th century. Soon, the Molozhskoe principality was formed in the adjacent territories, which, under Tsar Ivan III, became part of the Russian state.
Several centuries ago, Mologa was a typical district Russian city - there were beautiful churches, schools, a telegraph office, a fire station (by the way, designed by the brother of the great writer Fyodor Dostoevsky), and there was also a shelter. Local merchants successfully traded; a couple of times a year, large fairs were held in Mologa, which attracted residents of the surrounding villages. The barge haulers pulled large ships along the river. By the beginning of the revolution, it was a very prosperous town in which provincial life was in full swing. Its population was almost 6 thousand people.
After the revolution, a course was announced for the electrification of the entire country. In the young Soviet state, there was an urgent need for electricity, and radical changes began on the Upper Volga. In the 1930s, it was decided to "build" a sea in these parts, and more specifically, by blocking the rivers, flood a huge territory, launching a hydroelectric power station here. The name of the future power plant was given by the nearby town of Rybinsk. The city of Mologa was supposed to go under water to a depth of 102 meters, together with it it was decided to destroy hundreds of other settlements that "interfered" with the sea, since the implementation of an ambitious idea required not only a lot, but a lot of water.
In 1935, the construction of a hydroelectric complex began here: the corresponding decree was signed by the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Molotov and the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Kaganovich.
At the time of the launch of the project to create a reservoir in Mologa, more than 6 thousand inhabitants lived. All of them were told that they could disassemble their wooden houses, transport them down the river to a new location, and reassemble them in designated plots. Nobody asked the local residents if they wanted to break away from the places inhabited by generations and endure such inconveniences. However, to all appearances, there were no openly dissatisfied - the Soviet propaganda was so strong. The settlers believed that they were moving in order to implement an important project that would help supply the capital and other settlements with electricity.
A large number of Mologa residents moved to Rybinsk and its environs.
It is clear that during the move there was a lot of confusion with the distribution of plots. For example, it happened that a person was given one plot, he began to assemble his house on it, and then it turned out that something had been messed up somewhere, and his plot was different. In addition, some of the families who moved to areas unsuitable for grazing animals lost their livestock after the move.
This resettlement lasted about five years, and in total, more than 130 thousand people left the settlements subject to flooding.
By the time of the flooding, there were 900 residential buildings in Mologa, about 200 retail outlets, two cathedrals, three churches, and a nunnery next to the city. All this had to be destroyed. All buildings that could not be disassembled were destroyed mechanically. During 1941–47, three monastic complexes were buried under the waves of the new reservoir, including the monastery, which was patronized by John of Kronstadt himself.
Another sad touch, later told by the participants of the resettlement: wild animals remained on the flooded area, the water became more and more, and the frightened animals tried to escape on the remaining islets of land. People felt sorry for them and they put boards and logs in the water so that the unfortunate animals had the opportunity to get to the shore.
As you might guess, the construction was carried out by prisoners (including political ones), for which a Volzhsky forced labor camp (popularly called Volgolag) was built near Rybinsk.
They tried not to talk about large-scale artificial flooding in the USSR. The Soviet media delicately avoided this topic. Only a few emigre publications abroad wrote about this bold project with alarm.
Mologa was empty in the spring of 1941, the dams were closed on April 13, and the water began to swallow the city. But they did not have time to clear the bottom and finish building the hydroelectric power station - the war began. Nevertheless, the hydroelectric power station was still urgently launched (it was being completed already in the process of work), because it supplied electricity to Moscow.
In the spring of 1941 in Mologa it was still possible to walk along the empty streets, and in 1946 the 102nd mark was passed: the city sank into the water, like Atlantis.
After the war, the Rybinsk reservoir finally appeared on Soviet geographical maps. Ships began to sail on the man-made sea.
The terrain in these parts became damp and swampy, peat islands that surfaced from the bottom appeared on the water, and some, not being fixed by anything, moved along the surface like rafts. Some species of animals have disappeared, new ones have appeared. A nature reserve was even created in these parts.
At first, here and there you could still see the domes of flooded churches sticking out of the water. Alas, over time, and they collapsed, went under water.
After the collapse of the USSR, it was increasingly said that the reservoir was created in vain and the Soviet authorities had no good reason for this ambitious undertaking to change the upper channel of the Volga, the climate, wildlife and, most importantly, the lives of more than 130 thousand people.
Many years passed, and the water began to recede a little, exposing the ruins of the "Soviet Atlantis", which, at a different turn of fate, could still remain a lovely Russian city.
Fans of mysterious stories are advised to read about the city of Heraklion and find out is it really the same Atlantis.
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