by Olga BAZANOVA, journalist

On the steep right bank of the river Kama at its confluence with the Toima there stands Yelabuga--one of the most beautiful towns of Russia and second largest in the Republic of Tatarstan (after its capital Kazan), rich in unique historic and cultural monuments. This town celebrated its millennial birthday in 2007.

The scientific exploration of the history of this area was begun in the mid-19th century by a group of local enthusiasts--Kapiton Nevostruev (corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences), an archaeologist, bibliographer and lawyer;

Ivan Shishkin, a merchant, talented self-taught engineer and ardent patriot of Yelabuga; and Pyotr Alabin, a government official, State Councilor and a passionate historian. In 1858, Alabin made the first official excavations in an ancient settlement well known to denizens of the place

at the village of Ananyino not far from Yelabuga. Two years later he published the results of his work in the "Bulletin of HM Russian Geographical Society".

Here are some excerpts from the article. "A Mound of about 7 ft high (just over 2 meters.--Ed.) and 219 paces in circumference, surrounded by 'dry', that is joined without mortar, of rough stone plates only... On a burial bed made of coal, burned logs and large pieces of wood set upright, lay a skeleton facing the north. Found on the bed and on its surface were different things, particularly pots, filled with earthy mass and small charred bones... There were also decorations of clay glazed beads placed by the head, and bronze plaques and bronze necklaces placed by the feet."

The oldest finds of the Alabin burial grounds that are dated around the 8th-3rd centuries B.C. caught scientists' attention. Thus it became possible to identify the archaeological culture named after the place of its discovery--Ananyino. This culture spread all over the Middle Volga in the Kama river basin. It was characterized by oblong log cabins, round-based modeled pottery, advanced hoe farming, cattle breeding, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy and blacksmithing.

The birth of the town of Yelabuga is firmly associated with the Emir of the Volga Bulgars* Ibrahim bln Muhammad I (1006-1025) who founded quite a few castles on the borders of his state--on the banks of the Volga, Kama, and Vyatka rivers, including Kazan and Yelabuga. In 2007, on Yelabuga's millennial, a monument was opened in his honor (artist, Firinat Khalikov and sculptor, Mahmoud Gasimov). The majestic statue of the legendary ruler stands at the highest point of the "Devil's den", as the locals call the remains of a fortified citadel-mosque of white stone. It was built in the 12th century on the site of an old wooden one, and before it, in the 5th-6th centuries, there had been a fortified Finno-Ugric settlement.

The fortress was square in plan (21x21 m), with eight towers, one of which has survived to our days thanks to the restoration works carried out in 1867 on the initiative of Ivan Shishkin. This unique monument is the only surviving ground structure of the ancient Bulgare. It is a stone cylinder 7.1 meters high (and 5.7 meters across) crowned with a low metal dome; it has walls 2 meters thick at the ground level and 0.7 meters at their top, and four windows facing the four cardinal points (north, south, east, and west).

In those days, Yelabuga probably lay on the same site as now: in 1911, a treasure of silver objects of the 11th-13th centuries was found there. And in the 2000s, archaeologists recovered fragments of farm buildings and burials of the same time. After he had conquered the Kazan Kingdom in 1552, Tsar Ivan IV went to Yelabuga and founded a Church of the Protecting Veil, presenting the famous Icon of Three

* Volga Bulgaria, Bulgar state in the 7th-13th A.D. in the Middle Volga and the Kama river basin (Bulgars or Bulgarians--Turkic-speaking tribes that in the 4th century populated the Northern Black Sea coast, the North Caucasus and in the 7th century migrated to the Danube valley and later to the Middle Volga and elsewhere).--Ed.

Prelates to it. The icon is a specimen of the old Greek painting style and is still kept in the Church.

Yelabuga had its heyday in the 19th century when it became the capital of the Kama region and home to the wealthiest merchant and manufacturing families. Thus, in 1850s-1860s, local millionaire Pyotr Ushkov founded a number of chemical plants there and by the end of the century one of them had become the country's largest in the diversity and volume of production; it was the only one in Russia to produce chloral lime. Incidentally, in 1893, the great Russian scientist and encyclopedist who discovered the periodic law, Dmitry Mendeleev (a corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences),* produced a trial batch of smokeless powder** of his invention at this very plant; later, recalling his work there, said he "...was proud to see that some product created by a Russian can be not only equal, but even superior to foreign-made products."

Ushkov had done a lot for his home country: he provided financial support to those engaged in forestation and land reclamation, built several hospitals, schools with dormitories, apartments for teachers, and many parochial schools in Yelabuga and nearby villages, and in plants settlements.

But the Stakheev family of entrepreneurs was the most famous; they owned gold mines, oil fields, shipping lines, factories, and founded a Charity Committee to help the needy. Members of this family built and maintained churches in many parishes of this country and invested significant sums in building schools, orphanages, and in the beautification of their native town. Yelabuga still boasts of mansions and administrative buildings they had built, and, of course, the palatial State Pedagogical University--the former diocesan female school (1903, architect Ivan Charushin). In 2003, in front of its façade, a monument to one of the Stakheevs--Dmitry Ivanovich, a talented writer of the late 19th-early 20th centuries, was erected (sculptors, Alexander Golovachov and Vladimir Demchenko) as a token of gratitude of the local folk to the philanthropist merchants.

The Shishkin family was called the soul of the town: one of them, Father Zotik, received from Ivan IV the abovementioned Icon of Three Prelates, another one cast a bell for the local Church of Our Savior, while Ivan Vasilyevich had been repeatedly elected town mayor from 1818 on. In 1833, he designed and donated money (his fortune was much more modest than that of local millionaires) for the first water supply system-from the Yelabuga springs water ran down the hollowed trunks of larch trees as far as 2 km. It is interesting to note that the construction of the tireless inventor operates even today, only some of the pipes were replaced by metal ones.

* See: M. Savchenko, "Pride and Glory of Russia", Science in Russia, No. l, 2004.--Ed.

** Smokeless powder, explosives used in firearms and artillery, giving no smoke at the time of the shot. The type of smokeless powder proposed by Mendeleev (pyrocollodion) contains readily soluble nitrocellulose, a solvent and various additives, designed to stabilize gassing.--Ed.

However, the Shishkins gained truly world fame owing to Ivan Vasilyevich's son, also Ivan, who became a great landscape painter drawing inspiration from the natural beauty of his native land. By the way, the Stakheevs related to the Shishkins through marriage were the first to appreciate his talent: they helped the talented youth financially so he could receive education at the Moscow School of Painting and Sculpture and then in St. Petersburg, at H.M. Academy of Arts.

The stone house where Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was born in 1832 and spent his childhood and adolescence is still there in Yelabuga. Today it houses the only Shishkin Memorial Museum that also reproduces the house furnishings of provincial Russian merchants of the 19th century and keeps personal belongings of the great painter' and his family. Ivan Shishkin's desk is the centerpiece of his study: on it one can see photographs of his wife Darya Romanovna, daughters Alexandra, Anna, Catherine and Olga, and also History of Yelabuga (1871), a book written by Ivan Vasilyevich with the dedication: "To my kind and charitable fellow citizens."

The artist's bedroom has been recreated in accordance with his own drawing View of Yelabuga's Room (1850s) and it has a wooden bed, a dresser, a chest with a patchwork rug on crocheted by one of his sisters; there are self-portraits on the wall. The furnishings of the studio, the brightest room in the house, are absolutely identical with those of the 1860s-1880s in Shishkin's days. Here, a beautiful study Coniferous Forest on the easel will catch your eye at once.

A gallery is also a part of the exhibition. The pride of the museum is a collection of more than 50 original etchings (prints on copper) and several Shishkin paintings, most of them belonging to the early period of his work. Among the earliest paintings is Harvest (1850), followed by the romantic sketches of the 1860s The Hut, The Mill in a Field, The White Chamber, and A Small Minaret. The Birch Grove and The Creek created in the 1870s show

Shishkin as a realist artist and at last comes a light, lyrical painting, In the Country created in the 1890s.

The hospitable house of the Shishkins was frequented by the Ushkovs, the Stakheevs, and other merchants and industrialists, including Yelabuga mayor Vassily Durov as well as his sister Nadezhda--the legendary cavalry-maiden who arrived in these parts in 1831 and made friends with Ivan Vasilyevich. She wore a Hussar uniform, and was fond of riding around, astonishing the provincial public. She was bored: ten years of service (1806-1816) in the cavalry, campaigns against the French and her subsequent life in St. Petersburg were bright experiences compared with the sluggish Yelabuga.

And having "nothing better to do", as Nadezhda Andreyevna wrote in her "Autobiography", she decided to put in order "different pieces of... memoirs that survived in various transmutations of fitful life... to collect these scraps and whip them into something whole, printable... consulting Pushkin beforehand..." And here is what our greatest poet said about the memoirs of the cavalry-maiden (1836): "The Notes... are lovely! A lively, original, beautiful style. Success is certain."

The memoirs of the "Russian Amazon" did captivate readers. Some of them even took the book for Pushkin's creation. Vissarion Belinsky, a literary critic, essayist and philosopher of the first half of the 19th century, wrote: "If this is a hoax, then it is masterfully done; if these are original notes, then they are unbelievably entertaining and thrilling... What a wonderful, marvelous phenomenon of the moral world of the heroine, with her youthfully mischievous, chivalrous spirit, her aversion to women's clothes and women's occupations, with her deep poetic feelings..."

This woman indeed had something to remember. In 1806, dressed in a man's suit and calling herself a landowner's son, she joined a Cossack detachment and then entered the Lithuanian Uhlan regiment. Nadezhda Andreyevna participated in the battles of our troops with the army of Napoleonic France in East Prussia, showing enviable courage; in particular, she carried a wounded officer away from the battlefield, a feat for which she was awarded a St. George Cross and promoted to a commissioned officer. But it so happened that her letter to her father in which she asked to forgive her for running away from home fell into the hands of a relative and so little by little, the rumor of a girl holding a man's job reached the Emperor Alexander I*. At first, the Emperor was angry but then, when he had been convinced of the dedication, sincerity and passionate desire of Durova to serve Motherland, he allowed her to stay in the ranks as a cornet under the name of Alexander Alexandrov.

During the War of 1812, the cavalry-maiden fought in the battles of Smolensk, Kolotsk monastery (22 km west of Mozhaisk), and Borodino, where a cannon ball hit her in the leg. Promoted to lieutenant, she served as aide-de-

* See: F Petrov, "New Strokes to Familiar Portraits", Science in Russia, No. l, 2006.--Ed.

camp to the celebrated commander Field Marshal Mikhail Golenishchev-Kutuzov*.

Durova excelled in the foreign campaigns of the Russian Army**-fighting for the liberation of the German cities of Hamburg, Harburg and the Polish village of Modlin. The remainder of her days Durova spent in Yelabuga, helping from her staff-captain's pension veterans of "The Thunderstorm of 1812" (Russia's Patriotic War against Napoleon), or just her needy countrymen. She died in 1866 and was buried in the local St. Trinity cemetery with full military honors.

Yelabuga has the world's unique Durova museum (dedicated in 1993) in what was her manorial estate. In this manor, she wrote her sensational Notes of the Cavalry-Maiden; today it hosts an exposition on her life, military service, the battle of Borodino in particular, and her descendants living in France.

* See: G. Gerasimova, "Great Soldier and Diplomat", Science in Russia, No. 2, 2008.--Ed.

** Foreign campaigns of the Russian Army in 1813-1815, the offensive of the Russian troops supported by the allies (Prussia, Sweden, Austria) in the West for the final victory over Napoleon.--Ed.

Another famous woman ended her days at Yelabuga. Her stay there was very short--only 13 days--but quite tragic indeed. One of the great Russian poets of the 20th century, Marina Tsvetaeva published her first collection of poems The Evening Album in 1910, at the age of 18, and immediately drew attention from such well-known poets as Valery Bryusov, Maximilian Voloshin and Nikolai Gumilev, who saw her great talent immediately. In 1915-1916 the characteristic creative style of Tsvetaeva took body and form, with its hyper-bolism and vibrant emotionality. She adhered to it until her death.

But, as the Gospel according to Saint Luke says, "... Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required" (Lk., 12:48). After the revolutionary events of 1917 Marina's husband Sergei Efron joined the ranks of the opponents of the new Bolshevik government and then emigrated. In those years her pen produced the lines that glorified the White Guards who fought the Red Army on the fields of the Civil War. At the end of 1921, Tsvetaeva brought these poems (59 in all) into the book "Swan Camp" (first published only in 1957 in Munich), and the next year she got an opportunity to go abroad-first to Berlin and then to Prague--and the family was reunited.

In 1925, Tsvetaeva and Efron moved to Paris. An exile's life abroad was truly miserable; besides, Marina felt she was alien there: "No one to read my works to, no one to ask for advice, no one to share joy with... life without books, without readers, without friends..." Her poems, especially in the 1930s, were as good as not published; her prose provided some means of livelihood, though, in particular, the essay My Pushkin (1937), the memories about her pen brothers--Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Maximilian Voloshin, Boris Pasternak and others.

In 1939, Tsvetaeva, following her daughter and husband, returned to Russia; before the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 she lived in Bolshevo (now within the city limits of Korolev, Moscow Region), and in August 1941 she moved to Yelabuga to turn the last, tragic page of her life. Here, Marina settled with her son Georgi in Malaya Pokrovskaya Street, 20, but, broken by the terrible troubles that assailed her (arrest of her husband and daughter, emotional loneliness), without any hope of finding work, without any means of livelihood, she left this world of her own free will.

In 2005, the Memorial Tsvetaeva Museum was opened in that house. Since many things that had belonged to her former landlords, the Brodelshikovs, have survived, it became possible to reproduce in detail the atmosphere of the wartime years. Nearby is the Museum of Literature, where one can get familiar with the biography and the art of the poet, the editions of her works published in her lifetime as well as the works of the other masters of the Silver Age*--Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilev, Alexander Blok, Osip Mandelstam and others. The main section of the exhibition was called "Evacuation: Yelabuga". The most precious relics there are Marina's personal belongings--tea spoons, a note pad, a cameo--a gift from her father, a dish purchased in Germany, a strand of hair,

* See: M. Shaposhnikov, "Pushkin! Our Coveted Liberty We Praise After Thee!", Science in Russia, No. 4, 2004.--Ed.

copies of letters from the NKVD (secret police) archives, a puff-box of her daughter.

"The poet of doom" was buried in the St. Peter and St. Paul cemetery in Yelabuga, but the exact site of her grave still remains dubious. In 1960, her sister Anastasia put up a cross, and 10 years later the Union of Writers of Tatarstan placed a granite headstone there. In 2002, to commemorate the 110th birth anniversary of Marina, a square named after Tsvetaeva was dedicated in the town, with her bronze bust (sculptors Alexander Golovachov and Vladimir Demchenko) erected there.

The unique memorial complexes that we have visited are now within the Yelabuga State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve established in 1990 and, five years later, gaining the status of a cultural heritage object of federal importance. The historic core of Yelabuga is highly remarkable for its wholeness: more than 700 two - and three-story brick buildings dating back to the late 18th and early 20th centuries have survived. According to the Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, Yelabuga is among the thirty well-preserved towns in Russia.