Let us start today's blog with a couple of photographs from last night. This statue is of the great operatic bass baritone, Fyodr Ivanovich Shalyapin (also known under the French version of his name, Feodor Chaliapin). Shalyapin, who had no formal training in music, was born and raised in Kazan, and his statue now stands in front of the bell-tower and church named for him, and the hotel that now bears his name. The belltower is the tallest structure on Baumann Street.

Fyodr Ivanovich Shalyapin, in front of the Shalyapin Hotel in Kazan.

Shalyapin may be best remembered in the west for his rendition of the "Song of the Volga Boatmen" ("Ei ukhnem!"). For some reason, Youtube is blocked over here, but you can check out his version by googling [Shalyapin "Song of the Volga Boatmen"]; it's worth checking out.

While Sasha and I were walking back from supper, we took a new turn, and so ended up walking back in the rain. We did, however, find the statue of Butlerov seated, in a park just down the hill from the Butlerov Institute. In addition to the statue, Sasha also got some shots of the rainbow, which was quite intense (we saw a clear second-order diffraction ring).

Butlerov statue in the park during the rainstorm.

Sviyazhsk

We had set today aside for a 4-5 hour tour of Sviyazhsk Island (really a peninsula), about 1 hour's drive from Kazan upstream on the Volga. The tour actually lasted 7.5 hours (we left at 9:00 and got back at 4:30). The peninsula is the location of a city that Ivan the Terrible constructed in a single day from logs floated down the Volga from the town of Uglish, near Moscow. The logs were tagged with a code that showed how the town was to be assembled. The first building raised was the church, a small wooden church, the Church of St. Sergei, that you can now take photographs in. The artwork inside is the work of local icon painters, and all are restorations. There were no nails used in the construction of the church, which was built in 1522.

Markings on the logs coded where each was to be placed in the construction of the city. Only axes and adzes were used in cutting and shaping the logs.

The monk for whom the Church of St. Sergei is named

The front wall of the Church of St. Sergei. Sasha is in the foreground, taking a photograph.

Your humble blogger in the Church of St. Sergei.

The city of Sviyazhsk was built on a hill at the confluence of three rivers; the two larger ones are the Sviyaga and Volga Rivers.

The Sviyaga River

The confluence of the Sviyaga (right) and Volga (left, and distant right) Rivers

Outside the wall is a monument to the political prisoners (mainly intellectuals) who were imprisoned here during the Soviet era (especially the Stalin era), when all religious buildings were either torn down or converted to a secular purpose. The Sviyazhsk monastery and its associated buildings were converted to a Gulag, which protected them from destruction.

Memorial to the Gulag prisoners outside the walls of Sviyazhsk.

Outside the walls of Scviyazhsk

As we passed through the gate to the city, we saw the stables on our right, but we first passed to the left, and started walking down to the far end of the city. I had expected that this "Island" would be quite small, but I am sure that we must have walked the best part of a mile before we got to the far end of the island. Of course, you are also asking why they call it an island, when it is most demonstrably a peninsula, right? It turns out that when the Soviets dammed the Volga, it caused the river level to rise dramatically -- so much that parts of Kazan city itself were inundated. Even today, although they have mitigatedf the situation, the river level is still 8 meters (27 feet) above its level before the dams were built. This is, in part, the reason that the Volga is navigable to barges and ships even above Kazan. For a number of years, it really was an island. Today, the plain at the base of the hill, where the artisans and tradesmen lived, is under water.

Walking to the end of the "island." Gene (left) and Sasha (right) are in the foreground, flanking our guide. The cathedral with the silver roof is Assumption Cathedral, and the smaller church to the right is Trinity Cathedral The red brick building houses the convent

Another photo of the convent, with a monk approaching us.

The same fate -- protection from destruction by the Soviets -- did not befall two cathedrals in the grounds. The picture below shows a large wooden cross erected on the site of the St. Sophia Cathedral. All that remains of this building is a pile of rubble left after all the bricks that could be harvested from the building were taken away.

The small mound behind the sign and the cross are all that is left of the St. Sophia Cathedral. The bricks were harvested as the building was deconstructed in the 1930s under Stalin, and the rest was left as a pile of rubble (now overgrown).

For once, it is the sign that was blurry!

At the time of Catherine the Great, the monastery had grown to somewhere around 400 monks, but she then passed her secularizing laws, which meant that the monastery was downsized, and much of its early grounds converted to a convent. This included Assumption Cathedral.

Assumption Cathedral, Sviyazhsk

Assumption Cathedral, Sviyazhsk, with the modern convent building (white walls) in front of it.

A gate into the convent cloisters

Continuing down towards the confluence of the rivers, we came to the "secular" church, the Church of St. Nicholas. This church is called a "secular" church because it was not built to have a direct association with the monastery or convent.

The Church of St. Nicholas

On our way back to the monastery proper, we passed the headquarters of Trotsky, who dircted yet another battle against Kazan from here. In this case, the White (Tsarist) Russian forces had captured Kazan from the Reds, and were they to have held the city, the revolution would have collapsed. Trotsky applied an ancient method to inspire his troops -- after two battles in which his untrained peasants were routed by the highly trained Tsarist troops, Trotsky applied the old Roman method of decimation: one man in ten was shot. Needless to say, they fought with fanatical courage the next time, and Kazan fell to the Red Army. We also passed what was a hospital at the time of the revolution (it is now being converted to a museum).

A World War 1 and civil war hospital, originally a house of a nobleman or wealth merchant. Now being converted to a museum.

The monastery itself has its own walls, and when we passed the gate, Sasha again had to don the apron.

The monastery itself consists of several buildings, the most impressive of which is the cathedral, which was built in several stages. The initial cathedral building stood on a square footprint, and the bell-tower was added later. Finally, the refectory was aded, and the dome and spire. We were not able to enter this church, so I cannot tell you much about its interior.

The cathedral within the monastery walls was begun early, and built in stages

Thew bell-tower within the monastery walls

The main entrance to the monks' cells.

After we had toured the monastery, we got lunch -- monastery bread and cheese (delicious!!!), and then we began the journey back home. This time, instead of taking the bridge across the Volga,. we took a ferry. The car ferry holds 18 cars, apparently, and we were the last car on for our ride. The pictures below tell the story of our crossing way better than I could.

The car ferry across the Volga

The bow (port side) of the ferry. The sign says 'NO {littering, smoking}

The cars are stacked like cordwood!

The propeller turbulence in the wake of the ferry

The railway bridge across the Volga

Yours truly in his paper hat, crossing "Mother Volga." The spot on my pocket is a local hitch-hiker too lazy to fly across the river.

We made just one stop on the way back -- to get shashlyk, which this time were port chops on a spit. I had mine with pickled ginger (the Russians love anything pickled) and russian flatbread toasted over open coals. There is enough pork left for at least two meals!

More anon...