Mologa is a flooded city where it is located. Rybinsk reservoir, hydroelectric power station and flooded mologa

It’s probably time to talk about one city that for more than 70 years you can’t come to or walk through its streets - this city doesn’t exist. The city that forever disappeared into the abyss of the Rybinsk Reservoir is the city of Mologa!

There will be almost no words of mine in this post; today the text will simply be copied from various Internet pages about the history of Mologa. Also today there will be no photos of me - all the photos were also found on the World Wide Web...

Mologa is an ancient Russian city. The time of the initial settlement of the area where the city of Mologa stood is unknown. For the first time, the name Mologa, referring to the river, is mentioned in the chronicle in 1149, when the Grand Duke of Kiev Izyaslav Mstislavich, fighting with Yuri Dolgoruky, the prince of Suzdal and Rostov, burned all the villages along the Volga up to the Mologa River. Presumably at this time there was already a small settlement on the river that belonged to the Rostov princes. Then the chronicles are silent about the Mologa country until 1207. Under the Grand Duke Vsevolod the Big Nest, a new division into appanages followed in Northern Rus', and Mologa, according to Vsevolod’s will, fell to the share of his son, the Rostov prince Konstantin, and Konstantin, in 1218, together with Yaroslavl he gave it to his son Vsevolod.
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The city itself was rebuilt at the end of the 12th century. In the middle of the 13th century, Prince Yuri II came here to gather an army against the Tatar troops.

In 1321, the Principality of Molozhsk appeared - after the death of the Yaroslavl prince David, his sons, Vasily and Mikhail, divided his possessions: Vasily, as the eldest, inherited Yaroslavl, and Mikhail received an inheritance on the Mologa River.

In the 15th century, under Ivan III, the Mologa principality became part of the Moscow principality. He also moved the fair to Mologa, which was previously located 50 km up the Mologa River in the Kholopy town. It was the largest in the Upper Volga region at the end of the 14th - beginning of the 16th centuries, but then lost its importance due to the shallowing of the Volga and the movement of trade routes. Nevertheless, Mologa remained a significant trade center of local importance.
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An ancient palace settlement or merchant settlement, Mologa received the status of a district town of the Mologa district in 1777, and at the same time was assigned to the Yaroslavl governorship and the corresponding province. The city plan was confirmed on March 21, 1780 and October 26, 1834. Public offices were opened in Mologa on January 4, 1778.
In 1778, the newly discovered city already had 418 houses and 20 shops, and 2,109 inhabitants.

In 1895 there were already 11 factories (distillery, bone grinding, glue and brick factories, a plant for the production of berry extracts, etc.), 58 workers, the amount of production was 38,230 rubles. Merchant certificates were issued: 1 guild, 1 guild, 2 guild 68, for petty trading 1191. The treasury, bank, telegraph, post office, and cinema functioned.
There were 3 libraries and 9 educational institutions: a city three-class men's school, the Alexander two-class women's school, two parish schools - one for boys, the other for girls; Alexandrovsky orphanage; “Podosenovskaya” (named after the founder of the merchant P. M. Podosenov, a major flax merchant) gymnastics school - one of the first in Russia; bowling, cycling, fencing were taught; Carpentry, marching and rifle techniques were taught, and the school also had a stage and stalls for staging performances.

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Until the revolution of 1917, Mologa was a wealthy merchant city at the crossroads of water trade routes - the Sheksna, Mologa and Volga rivers.
In addition to trade, agriculture was well developed in the city. The endless floodplain meadows provided excellent grass for cows, which had a positive effect on the taste of milk and butter. Molozhskaya oil was known in all major Russian cities. Economic merchants grew rich, built stone houses, erected temples, schools, and hospitals.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, five thousand people lived in Mologa. There were six cathedrals and churches, nine educational institutions, and several factories and factories.

In the 1930s, there were more than 900 houses in the city, about a hundred of which were made of stone, and there were 200 shops and shops in and around the shopping area. The population did not exceed 7 thousand people.
At the time of liquidation, the city was living a full life, there were 6 cathedrals and churches, 9 educational institutions, factories and factories.
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In 1931, by resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars, a plan was adopted for the construction of a cascade of reservoirs called the Big Volga. Already in September of the following year, equipment and workers from the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station were transferred to Rybinsk. The construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station has begun, capable, according to the plan, of producing 200 MW of electricity around the clock. To do this, it was necessary to create a man-made sea - to flood the area adjacent to the construction site. For normal operation of the station, the water level had to be 98 meters.

On September 14, 1935, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution to begin construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes. According to the original design, the height of the water surface above sea level of the Rybinsk Reservoir was supposed to be 98 m. On January 1, 1937, this figure was changed to 102 m, which almost doubled the amount of flooded land. The increase in the retaining level was due to the fact that these 4 meters made it possible to increase the generation capacity of the Rybinsk hydroelectric station from 220 to 340 MW.
The city of Mologa lay at 98 m above sea level and, thus, fell into the flood zone. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it, 700 villages and the city of Mologa.

In the fall of 1936, the young people were informed of the impending resettlement. Local authorities decided to resettle about 60% of the city's residents and remove their houses by the end of the year, despite the fact that it was impossible to do it in the two months remaining before the Mologa and Volga froze, in addition, the houses being floated would remain damp until the summer. However, it was not possible to implement this decision - the resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted four years.

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On April 13, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked. The waters of the Volga, Sheksna and Mologa began to overflow their banks and flood the territory. The tallest buildings in the city and churches were razed to the ground. All buildings had to be leveled at least to the level of the second floor - so that in the future they would not interfere with shipping. Of course, the easiest way was to blow up houses with dynamite. Former residents of Mologa remember how the Epiphany Cathedral was demolished. Built to last, the mighty building only rose into the air from the first explosion, and then sank to its place - safe and sound. Only the fourth or fifth charge of dynamite was able to destroy the cathedral.

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The city began to gradually sink under water, disappearing from the surface of the earth for many decades...
“Only occasionally, after a dry summer, in the waning autumn days, Mologa will emerge from under the water, revealing its cobbled streets, the foundations of houses, a cemetery with tombstones. Like a ghost, Mologa will appear and disappear in the muddy green shallow waters of the Rybinsk Reservoir - as if reminding to myself, about my tragic story..."
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In the Yaroslavl region, on the Rybinsk reservoir, the buildings of the city of Mologa appeared from the water, which was flooded in 1940 during the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Now there is low water in the region, the water has gone and exposed entire streets: the foundations of houses, the walls of churches and other city buildings are visible.

The city of Mologa in the Yaroslavl region, which disappeared from the face of the earth more than 50 years ago, again appeared above the surface of the water as a result of low water levels that came to the region, ITAR-TASS reports. It was flooded in 1940 during the construction of a hydroelectric power station on the Rybinsk Reservoir.

Former residents of the city came to the banks of the reservoir to observe the unusual phenomenon. They said that the foundations of houses and the outlines of streets appeared from the water. Mologans are going to visit their former homes. Their children and grandchildren plan to sail on the Moskovsky-7 motor ship to the ruins of the city to walk around their native land.

“We go to visit the flooded city every year. Usually we lower flowers and wreaths into the water, and priests serve a prayer service on the ship, but this year there is a unique opportunity to set foot on land,” said Valentin Blatov, chairman of the public organization “Community of Mologans.”

The city of Mologa in the Yaroslavl region is called the “Russian Atlantis” and the “Yaroslavl city of Kitezh”. If it had not been sunk in 1941, it would now be 865 years old. The city was located 32 km from Rybinsk and 120 km from Yaroslavl at the confluence of the Mologa and Volga rivers. From the 15th to the end of the 19th century, Mologa was a major trading center, with a population of 5,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century.

On September 14, 1935, a decision was made to begin construction of the Rybinsk and Uglich hydroelectric complexes, as a result of which the city found itself in a flood zone. Initially, it was planned to raise the water level to 98 meters above sea level, but then the figure increased to 102 meters, since this increased the power of the hydroelectric power station from 200 megawatts to 330. And the city had to be flooded... The city was flooded on April 13, 1941.

Incredibly lush grass grew in the fields of Mologa because during the spring flood the rivers merged into a huge floodplain and unusually nutritious silt remained in the meadows. The cows ate the grass that grew on it and produced the most delicious milk in Russia, from which butter was produced at local creameries. Such oil is not produced now, despite all the ultra modern technologies. There is simply no more Molog nature.

In September 1935, the USSR government adopted a decree on the start of construction of the Russian Sea - the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex. This implied the flooding of hundreds of thousands of hectares of land along with the settlements located on it, 700 villages and the city of Mologa.

At the time of liquidation, the city was living a full life, there were 6 cathedrals and churches, 9 educational institutions, factories and factories.

On April 13, 1941, the last opening of the dam was blocked. The waters of the Volga, Sheksna and Mologa began to overflow their banks and flood the territory.

The tallest buildings in the city and churches were razed to the ground. When the city began to be ravaged, the residents were not even explained what would happen to them. They could only watch as Mologa-paradise was turned into hell.

Prisoners were brought in to work, who worked day and night, demolishing the city and building a waterworks. Prisoners died in hundreds. They were not buried, but simply stored and buried in common pits on the future seabed. In this nightmare, residents were told to urgently pack up, take only the essentials and go for resettlement.

Then the worst thing began. 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes. Knowing this, the builders began flooding. The rest were forcibly taken away.

After some time, a wave of suicides began among former Mologans. Whole families and one by one they came to the banks of the reservoir to drown themselves. Rumors spread about mass suicides, which reached Moscow. It was decided to evict the remaining Mologans to the north of the country, and remove the city of Mologa from the list of ever existing ones. Mentioning it, especially as a place of birth, was followed by arrest and prison. They tried to forcefully turn the city into a myth.

GHOST TOWN

But Mologa was not destined to become the City of Kitezh or the Russian Atlantis, which forever plunged into the abyss of water. Her fate is worse. The depths at which the city is located, in accordance with dry engineering terminology, are called “vanishingly small.” The reservoir level fluctuates, and approximately once every two years Mologa emerges from the water. Street paving, house foundations, and a cemetery with tombstones are exposed. And the Mologans come: to sit on the ruins of their home, to visit their father’s graves. For every “low-water” year, the ghost town pays its price: during the spring ice drift, the ice, like a grater, scrapes along the bottom in shallow water and takes with it material evidence of past life...

REPENTANCE CHAPEL

A unique museum of the flooded region was created in Rybinsk.

Now on the remaining Molog lands there are the Breitovsky and Nekouzsky districts of the Yaroslavl region. It was here, in the ancient village of Breytovo, located at the confluence of the Sit River into the Rybinsk Reservoir, that a popular initiative arose to build a penitential chapel in memory of all the flooded monasteries and temples resting under the waters of the man-made sea. This ancient village itself revealed the image of the tragedy of the Russian interfluve. Once in the flood zone, it was artificially moved to a new location, while historical buildings and temples remained at the bottom.

In November 2003, the first monument to the victims of the flooded Mologsky district appeared. This is a chapel built exclusively with human donations on the shore of the Rybinsk Reservoir, in Breytovo. This is the memory of those who did not want to leave their small homeland and went under water along with Mologa and the flooded villages. This is also the memory of all those who died during the construction of the hydroelectric power station. The chapel was named “Our Lady of the Waters.”

Penitential chapel in Breytovo

Icon of the Mother of God “I am with you, and no one else is against you” or Leushinskaya

Yaroslavl Archbishop Kirill blessed this chapel to dedicate this chapel to the Mother of God “I am with you, and no one else is against you,” the icon that became a symbol of flooded Rus', and to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the patron saint of swimmers. Therefore, the chapel also received another name: Theotokos-Nikolskaya.

In an area rich in water, at the confluence of the Mologa River and the Volga. The width of Mologa opposite the city was 277 m, the depth was from 3 to 11 m. The width of the Volga was up to 530 m, the depth was from 2 to 9 m. The city itself was located on a fairly significant and flat hill and stretched along the right bank of Mologa and along the left bank Volga. Before the railway communications, from which Mologa remained aloof, the busy St. Petersburg postal route ran here.

Since the 17th century, the settlement has been classified as a city Epsom salt(named after the river flowing nearby), located 13 km up the Mologa River from the city. Immediately outside the city there began a swamp and then a lake (about 2.5 km in diameter), called Saints. A small stream flowed from it into the Mologa River, bearing the name Mine.

Middle Ages

The time of the initial settlement of the area where the city of Mologa stood is unknown. In the chronicles, the name of the Mologa River appears for the first time in 1149, when the Grand Duke of Kiev Izyaslav Mstislavich, fighting with Yuri Dolgoruky, the prince of Suzdal and Rostov, burned all the villages along the Volga all the way to Mologa. This happened in the spring, and the war had to stop, as the water in the rivers rose. It was believed that the spring flood caught the combatants exactly where the city of Mologa stood. In all likelihood, there has long been a settlement here that belonged to the princes of Rostov.

From the inventory compiled between 1676 and 1678 by the steward M.F. Samarin and the clerk Rusinov, it is clear that Mologa at that time was a palace settlement, that there were then 125 households in it, including 12 belonging to fishermen, that these latter, together with the fishermen of Rybnaya Sloboda, they caught red fish in the Volga and Mologa, delivering 3 sturgeon, 10 white fish and 100 sterlets each year to the royal court. It is unknown when the residents of Mologa stopped paying this tax. In 1682 there were 1281 houses in Mologa.

The coat of arms of the city of Mologa was Supremely approved on August 31 (September 11), 1778 by Empress Catherine II along with other coats of arms of the cities of the Yaroslavl governorship (PSZ, 1778, Law No. 14765). Law No. 14765 in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire is dated June 20, 1778, but on the drawings of coats of arms attached to it, the date of approval of the coats of arms is indicated - August 31, 1778. In the complete collection of laws it is described as follows: “a shield in a silver field; part three of this shield contains the coat of arms of the Yaroslavl governorship (on the hind legs there is a bear with an ax); in two parts of that shield, part of an earthen rampart is shown in an azure field; it is trimmed with a silver border or white stone.” ). The coat of arms was created by a fellow herald, collegiate advisor I. I. von Enden.

The reason for the city's prosperity was discovered by accident. At the opening of the city duma, the residents passed a secret public verdict of the following content: since the established duma can only dispose of the income specified in the law, and for purposes also determined by law, under the control of the highest authorities, they decided to maintain the previous public administration under the supervision of the same city mayor and the same members of the Duma and at the disposal of this management to provide special capital, formed according to a general layout. Thus, from 1786 to 1847, there were actually two city governments in Mologa: one official, with 4 thousand rubles of income; another secret, but essentially real, with an income of 20 thousand rubles. The city flourished until the state accidentally learned the secrets; The head was put on trial, the illegal capital was transferred to the government and as a result, as I. S. Aksakov, who audited the city administration of the Yaroslavl province in 1849, wrote, “the city fell into decay and quite quickly.”

In 1862, it was announced in Mologa that there were 1 merchant capital for the 2nd guild and 56 for the 3rd guild. Of those who took guild certificates, 43 were engaged in trade in the city itself, and the rest - on the side. In addition to the merchants, 23 more peasants traded here at that time. Among the trading establishments in Mologa at that time there were 3 shops, 86 shops, 4 hotels and 10 inns.

On May 28, 1864, a terrible fire occurred, destroying to the ground the best and largest part of the city. Within 12 hours, more than 200 houses, a guest courtyard, shops and public buildings burned down. The loss was then calculated at over 1 million rubles. Traces of this fire were visible for about 20 years.

In 1889, Mologa owned 8.3 thousand hectares of land (first place among the cities of the province), including 350 hectares within the city limits; stone residential buildings 34, wooden 659 and non-residential stone buildings 58, wooden 51. All residents in the city were about 7032, including 3115 men and 3917 women. Except for 4 Jews, all were Orthodox. By class, the population was divided as follows (men and women): hereditary nobles 50 and 55, personal 95 and 134, white clergy with their families 47 and 45, monastics - 165 women, personal honorary citizens 4 and 3, merchants 73 and 98, burghers 2595 and 3168, peasants 51 and 88, regular troops 68 men, reserves 88 men, retired soldiers with families 94 and 161. By January 1, 1896, there were 7064 residents (3436 men and 3628 women).

There were 3 fairs in Mologa at that time: Afanasyevskaya - on January 17 and 18, Sredokrestnaya - on Wednesday and Thursday of the 4th week of Lent, and Ilyinskaya - on July 20. The cost of bringing goods to the first place was up to 20,000 rubles, and the sale was up to 15,000 rubles; the rest of the fairs were not much different from ordinary bazaars; weekly trading days on Saturdays were quite lively only in the summer. Crafts in the city were poorly developed. In 1888, there were 42 craftsmen in Mologa, 58 workers and 18 apprentices, in addition, about 30 people were engaged in the construction of barges; factories and factories: 2 distilleries, 3 gingerbread-bakery-pretzel factories, a cereal factory, an oil press factory, 2 brick factories, a malt factory, a candle and tallow factory, a windmill - 1-20 people worked at them.

The townspeople mainly found their means of living locally, although there were also absences. Residents of the Gorkaya Sol settlement, when free from field work, were hired to raft barges. Some of the residents of Mologa were engaged in agricultural work, renting arable and meadow lands from the city for this purpose. In addition, there was a huge meadow opposite the city; all the inhabitants who signed up for the unit used the good and plentiful hay from this meadow. The mowers were hired by the city, and the hay was raked by the shareholders themselves.

In terms of income, Mologa ranked fourth among other cities in the Yaroslavl province in 1887, and fifth in terms of expenses. Thus, city revenues in 1895 amounted to 45,775 rubles, expenses - 44,250 rubles. In 1866, a bank was opened in the city - it was based on money collected by residents for emergencies since the 1830s; by 1895 its capital reached 48,000 rubles.

At the end of the 19th century, Mologa was a small, narrow, long city, taking on a lively appearance during the load of ships, which lasted very briefly, and then plunged into the usual sleepy life of most of the county towns. From Mologa began the Tikhvin water system, one of three connecting the Caspian Sea with the Baltic Sea. Despite the fact that out of about 4.5 thousand ships passing through, only a few stopped here, their movement could not but affect the well-being of the residents, opening up the opportunity for them to supply the ship workers with food supplies and other necessary items. In addition to the passage of the mentioned ships, more than 300 ships were annually loaded at the Mologskaya pier with grain and other goods worth up to 650,000 rubles, and almost the same number of ships were unloaded here. In addition, up to 200 forest rafts were brought to Mologa. The total value of unloaded goods reached 500,000 rubles.

In 1895 there were 11 factories (distillery, bone grinding, glue and brick factories, a plant for the production of berry extracts, etc.), 58 workers, the amount of production was 38,230 rubles. Merchant certificates were issued: 1 guild, 1 guild, 2 guild 68, for petty trading 1191. The treasury, bank, telegraph, post office, and cinema functioned.

There was a monastery and several churches in the city.

Afanasyevsky Monastery(from the 15th century - male, from 1795 - female) was located 500 m outside the city. Had 4 churches: cold (1840) and 3 warm (1788, 1826, 1890). The main relic was the miraculous icon of the Tikhvin Mother of God from the early 14th century.
Resurrection Cathedral was built in 1767 in the Naryshkin style and restored by the merchant P. M. Podosenov in 1881-1886. The cathedral church had 5 altars - the main one of the Resurrection of Christ and the side altars - the Prophet Elijah, Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Dormition of the Mother of God and Saints Athanasius and Cyril. The bell tower of three decreasing octagons is built like the Uglich bell towers. Separately from this temple (cold) built in 1882 in the Russian-Byzantine style, warm Epiphany Cathedral, which had three thrones - Epiphany, the Protection of the Mother of God and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The same P. M. Podosenov, together with the merchant N. S. Utin, took the main part in the construction of this cathedral. Attached to the cathedral was also a wooden structure, plastered on both sides, the former cemetery Church of the Exaltation of the Cross, built in 1778.
Ascension Parish Church built in 1756; it contains three thrones: the Ascension, the holy princes Boris and Gleb and the Archangel Michael. Baroque elements were used in the design of its facades.
All Saints Cemetery Church, built in 1805, with two altars - in the name of All Saints and John the Baptist.
Church in the village of Gorkaya Sol, built in 1828 by the same F.K. Bushkov. She had 2 thrones - the Apostle Thomas and the Kazan Mother of God.

There were 3 libraries and 9 educational institutions: a city three-class men's school, the Alexander two-class women's school, two parish schools - one for boys, the other for girls; Alexandrovsky orphanage; “Podosenovskaya” (named after the founder of the merchant P. M. Podosenov) gymnastics school - one of the first in Russia; bowling, cycling, fencing were taught; Carpentry, marching and rifle techniques were taught, and the school also had a stage and stalls for staging performances.

There was a zemstvo hospital with 30 beds, a city hospital for incoming patients and with it a warehouse of books on popular medicine, available for reading for free; city disinfection chamber; private eye clinic of Dr. Rudnev (6,500 visits per year). The city, at its own expense, supported a doctor, a nurse-midwife and two nurses to care for the sick at home. There were 6 doctors in Mologa (1 of them was a woman), 5 paramedics, 3 paramedics, 3 midwives, 1 pharmacy. For walks on the banks of the Volga, a small public garden was built. The climate was characterized as dry and healthy, and it was believed that it helped Mologa avoid epidemics of such terrible diseases as plague and cholera.

Charity for the poor was staged beautifully in Mologa. There were 5 charitable institutions: including the water rescue society, guardianship for the poor of the city of Mologa (since 1872), 2 almshouses - Bakhirevskaya and Podosenovskaya. Owning enough timber, the city came to the aid of the poor, distributing it to them for fuel. The guardianship of the poor divided the entire city into sections, and each section was in charge of a special trustee. In 1895, the trusteeship spent 1,769 rubles; there was a canteen for the poor. It was very rare to meet a beggar in the city.

Soviet power in the city was established on December 15 (28), 1917, not without some resistance from supporters of the Provisional Government, but without any bloodshed. During the Civil War, there was a food shortage, especially acute at the beginning of 1918.

In 1929-1940, Mologa was the center of the district of the same name.

In 1931, a machine and tractor station for seed production was organized in Mologa; its tractor fleet, however, numbered only 54 units in 1933. In the same year, an elevator for seeds of grassland grasses was built, and a seed-growing collective farm and technical school were organized. In 1932, a zonal seed production station was opened. In the same year, an industrial complex arose in the city, combining a power plant, a mill, an oil mill, a starch and syrup plant, and a bathhouse.

Flooded City

The first meetings of Mologans date back to the 1960s. Since 1972, every second Saturday in August, Mologans gather in Rybinsk to commemorate their lost city. Currently, on the day of the meeting, a trip by boat to the Mologa region is usually arranged.

In 1992-1993, the level of the Rybinsk reservoir dropped by more than 1.5 meters, allowing local historians to organize an expedition to the exposed part of the flooded city (paved streets, contours of foundations, forged gratings and gravestones in the cemetery were visible). During the expedition, interesting materials were collected for the future Mologa Museum and an amateur film was made.

In 1995, the Museum of the Mologsky Region was created in Rybinsk. In June 2003, on the initiative of the public organization “Community of Mologans”, the Administration of the Yaroslavl Region organized a round table “Problems of the Mologa region and ways to solve them”, at which V. I. Lukyanenko first put forward the idea of creating the Mologa National Park in memory of the flooded city .

In August 2014, the region experienced low water, the water receded and entire streets were exposed: the foundations of houses, the walls of churches and other city buildings are visible. Former residents of the city come to the banks of the reservoir to observe the unusual phenomenon. The children and grandchildren of the Mologans sailed on the motor ship “Moskovsky-7” to the ruins of the city to set foot on their “native land”.

Notes

Now flooded.
Trinity. History of the Mologa country, p. 39. - Gorodsk. settlements in Russia. empires. T. V, part 2. St. Petersburg. 1866 vol., p. 463.

In the "Small Towns" section today we will go to Mologa, Yaroslavl region. This city has not been on the map of Russia for more than seventy years. It was destroyed and flooded when the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station was being built. But periodically - due to a drop in water level - the ruins of Mologa appear on the surface.

This year there is low water on the Volga. The captain of a tourist steamer, leaving through the locks into the Rybinsk Reservoir, one of the largest on the river, first of all asks the dispatcher about the water level.

“The average level of the Rybinsk reservoir today is ninety-nine thirty-six,” the dispatcher reports.

This is a record low over the past decade. Which, however, is only good for this flight. The water, which dropped two meters, revealed what people came here for: ruins of the city of Mologa, destroyed and flooded seventy years ago during the construction of the Rybinsk hydroelectric power station.

The journey from Rybinsk to the place where the city of Mologa used to be located takes three hours by boat. Now it’s hard to believe that there was once a city here. But there is confirmation: on the islands that appeared in the middle of the Rybinsk Reservoir, the foundations of buildings have been preserved.

The ship cannot get close to the shoals; tourists are transferred to a small boat, which slowly, guided by an echo sounder, approaches Mologa.

The island is littered with broken bricks. The wreckage of some building stands out. It turns out that this is the former Epiphany Cathedral. Over the years spent under water, the ruins of Mologa were overgrown with mud and shell rock.

A strange feeling arises when you step through this place, which used to be a street in the city of Mologa, but turned out to be under water. This sandbank appeared on the reservoir in July, and in November, when the water level rises, it will disappear again.

A historian from Uglich, Viktor Kiryukhin, is perhaps the most frequent guest in Mologa. As soon as he sees that the Volga is getting shallow, he immediately buys a ticket on a tourist boat and goes here.

Victor Kiryukhin, historian: “That’s where there was probably the Resurrection Cathedral. But you can’t get to it now. But there was the city All Saints Cemetery...”

The city was located on a hill - at the confluence of the Volga and Mologa rivers. The island that appears is the central square - Sennaya, from which the main streets diverged.

Design engineer of the Rybinsk hydroelectric complex Nikolay Malyshev called Mologa “a run-down town that doesn’t represent anything.” Looking at rare newsreel footage and photographs from the beginning of the last century, it is difficult to agree with this. There were several schools, a gymnastics school, a hospital, and two almshouses.

In terms of income, Mologa ranked fourth in the province. Most of the male population went to work in St. Petersburg, where Mologans worked as cab drivers, waiters, and builders. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the photo of the mowing at the Leushinsky Monastery there are only women.

Vladimir Shatkov’s relatives did not have to leave Mologa; good carpenters always had work here: they built houses and baths. In 1936, they dismantled their house and moved to Yaroslavl.

Construction of a hydroelectric power station was underway and the city began to be demolished. Newsreels recorded Red Army soldiers planting explosives in the wall of the cathedral in order to clear the so-called bed of the future reservoir.

: “Moreover, when they moved, many families, including their family, in addition to belongings, cattle and other things, they transported the remains of their relatives and also resettled them to a new land, to the high banks.”

Most families dismantled their houses and floated them to Rybinsk. A whole district of settlers appeared here - Zavolzhsky. Rumor claims that not all residents left Mologa.

Vladimir Shatkov, relative of immigrants from Mologa: “More than a hundred people died in the flood zone. People simply did not believe that water could come so far from the rivers that have always existed here.”

Director of the cascade of Upper Volga hydroelectric power stations Andrei Derezhkov does not believe in this story.

Andrey Derezhkov, director of the Upper Volga hydroelectric power station cascade: “This is probably one of the most widespread and numerous myths. The Rybinsk reservoir was filled over the course of four years, so no one could drown there in such a situation, no matter how hard they wanted.”

The Rybinsk hydroelectric station was built during the period of the so-called “Great Leap Forward” in the industrial development of the country, while “turning people’s life away from its historical course and driving it to new shores.” These are the words of the historian Vasily Klyuchevsky, who characterized the times of Peter the Great in this way, and are valid for all eras of change in Russia. One can only regret that for Mologa, as well as many other flooded towns and villages, there was no place for new life on the shores.

Victor Kiryukhin, historian: “We probably shouldn’t send curses to those people who built power plants and reservoirs. Who helped us find a new quality of life and survive the war. We should not make such mistakes again.”

According to the decision of the Ministry of Culture, the Rybinsk Hydroelectric Power Station is an architectural monument. However, at the same time it is also a memorial in honor of those who built the station and the countless Gulag prisoners who died here.

This year Mologa also had its own memorial sign, erected by the descendants of the settlers. True, when the autumn rains begin, the water level will rise, and the Rybinsk Reservoir will hide it along with the shoals.

In the 1930s, before the flooding, there were almost a thousand houses in Mologa. At the same time, there were 200 shops and small shops in the central shopping area and on the streets nearby. That is, one store for nine houses. In total, about 7 thousand people lived in the city at that time.

There was a monastery and several churches in the city. Mologa was famous not only as a trade and transport hub of the country, but also as a producer of butter and cheese, which was even supplied to London. There were 11 factories in the city: a distillery, a bone mill, a glue and brick factory, a plant for the production of berry extracts, etc., there was a treasury, a bank, a telegraph office, a post office, and a cinema.

After the revolution. In the 1930s, there were more than 900 houses in the city, about a hundred of which were made of stone, and there were 200 shops and shops in and around the shopping area. The population did not exceed 7 thousand people.

In the fall of 1936, the young people were informed of the impending resettlement. Local authorities insisted on relocating about 60% of the city's residents and removing their homes by the end of the year, despite the fact that it was impossible to do so in the two months remaining before the freezing of Mologa and the Volga. In addition, the floated houses would remain damp until the summer. It was not possible to implement this decision - the resettlement of residents began in the spring of 1937 and lasted four years. By the spring of 1941, the city (according to the TSB, recently numbered 6,100 inhabitants) was deserted, all buildings had been moved or destroyed. The city area was finally flooded in 1946. Those. there was a gradual increase in water level over 6 years.

Most of the Mologans were settled near Rybinsk in the village of Slip, which for some time was called Novaya Mologa. Some ended up in neighboring regions and cities, in Yaroslavl, Moscow and Leningrad. It was not only Mologa that went under water. The following were flooded: the ancient village of Breytovo, ancient villages and temples located along the former banks of Mologa were flooded, in particular, the village of Borisogleb - the former Kholopy Gorodok, first mentioned in the 12th century, the Yugskaya Dorofeevsky Hermitage, the Leushinsky St. John the Baptist Convent, and majestic five-domed cathedral.

Don’t believe the pictures on the Internet: here there are no skeletons of bell towers, no church domes, or ruins sticking out above the water. The only building in the city that survived the flooding was the prison. According to old guidebooks, it remained on the island until the end of the 1970s.

On the site of the high bank of the Mologa River, where the city’s cathedrals stood, there is a sandbank covered with bricks. If you wander around it, you can stumble upon a tombstone buried in the sand, find a fragment of a cast-iron grate and nothing more.

MYTHS:

There are a lot of such pictures. Not only the “yellow press”, but also serious news portals dabble in Photoshop.
The city of Mologa is called the Russian Atlantis and the city is a ghost. There are many myths that we were introduced to at the Mologa Museum.

1. For example, that residents tied themselves to the porch of the house and went under the water along with the house. This is fiction. At the time of the flooding, all houses were transported or destroyed, because... construction debris would damage the dam. The eviction of residents took place in 1936/37. The flooding lasted for 6 years (1941/47), i.e. the water came very slowly. No man could stand to stand chained for several years, waiting for the flood. Although there is such a document on the Internet:

Many researchers doubt the authenticity of this document. None of the researchers saw the original of this document with their own eyes. Copies that can be found on the Internet, as they say, will not fit the case. In addition, the flooding did not occur instantly - the reservoir was filled gradually, from April 1941 to 1947. Therefore, “fastening yourself with locks” in order to die in your own home, and not on someone else’s side, is quite difficult. But you can drown if you jump into the water of a filled reservoir.

“The tallest buildings in the city, churches, were razed to the ground. When the city began to be ravaged, the residents were not even explained what would happen to them. They could only watch as Mologa-paradise was turned into hell. In this nightmare, residents were told to urgently pack up, take only the essentials and go for resettlement. Then the worst thing began. 294 Mologans refused to evacuate and remained in their homes. Knowing this, the builders began flooding. The rest were forcibly taken away... Whole families and one at a time came to the banks of the reservoir to drown themselves. Rumors spread about mass suicides, which reached Moscow. It was decided to evict the remaining Mologans to the north of the country.”

This myth is also dubious. There are many documents about the removal of houses and property to new places; these documents are in the museum.

Young people, part of it, gladly changed their place of residence from provincial Mologa to Moscow, Leningrad and Yaroslavl. The area was famous for its swampiness and abundance of mosquitoes, and the city was not distinguished by its amenities or economic well-being.

Few people thought about cultural heritage in those days. But most residents perceived it all as a tragedy. After all, this is their home, their homeland with the graves of their ancestors. Together with Mologa, about 700 villages and hamlets, hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile arable land, famous water meadows, pastures, green oak groves, forests, monuments of antiquity, culture, and the way of life of distant ancestors went under water.

2.“For one mention of it (Mologa), even just as a place of birth, one could end up in a camp for 10-25 years.” Newspapers wrote about the filling of the Rybinsk reservoir and showed newsreels. The place of birth of “Mologa” was written in the passport. Mologa, as a place of birth, appears in the lists of those killed at the front. The ban on mention is also rumors and unverified information. Although they didn’t jail you for anything in the old days. They could also be arrested for spreading rumors from point 1. Be that as it may, until the early 60s, the Mologans did not openly mention their lost homeland.

3. “The level of the reservoir fluctuates, and approximately once every two years Mologa emerges from the water. Street paving, house foundations, and a cemetery with tombstones are exposed. And the Mologans come: to sit on the ruins of their home, to visit their father’s graves.”

As already mentioned above (see photo), there are no streets or graves left to sit on, just as it is impossible to determine the location of the “native” houses. Especially if we assume that the last people who remember where their home and grave in the cemetery are can in no way be younger than 1931-1935. Those. at the time of shallowing (2014) they should be 79-85 years old. It is doubtful that they can not only navigate the terrain exposed in the water, but also independently reach their homeland. But young and curious tourists, including descendants of Mologans, visit the sandbank with pleasure.

MOVIE:

“Mologa. Russian Atlantis" film 2011. Filmed on the basis of the above-mentioned dubious Internet document about 294 dead. Nothing to do with history, just cinema.

MEMORY:

The memory of the city and nearby settlements remains only in photographs. It’s a pity for the lost churches, monasteries, houses, it’s a pity for the residents who lost their homeland. But nothing can be returned back. Now on the site of Mologa the waters of a huge reservoir splash.

In November 2003, a monument to the Mologa settlers, who left their homes during the construction of the hydroelectric power station from 1936 to 1941, and there were about 150 thousand people, appeared on the shore of the Rybinsk reservoir in Breytovo. The chapel, built with donations, was named “Our Lady of the Waters.”

THE SCARY TRUTH:

The tragedy of the socialist reconstruction of the Upper Volga is the broken destinies of people expelled from the territory they inhabited for centuries. These are thousands of people who died from unbearable conditions and the work of prisoners (Volgolag) during the construction of a hydroelectric power station. Experts are still arguing about the exact number of Volgolag victims. According to the most terrible data, about 880 thousand people found their death in Volgolag. Against the background of global goals, the fate of individual people, villages and entire cities obviously seemed insignificant to the country.

The Rybinsk archive contains hundreds of letters, where the same request is repeated: not to evict before winter, to be allowed to live in the old place until spring. The most incomprehensible thing about these letters is the dates. We are talking about the winter of 1936/37. Filling of the reservoir began only in 1941 and ended in 1947. No one understood why such a rush was needed. A more realistic history of the beginning of the construction of the Rybinsk reservoir, however, without mentioning the thousands of prisoners, was presented in the book by Volgolag, who personally participated in the construction of the Rybinsk waterworks: “To this day I remember how rafts of settlers floated along Mologa, Sheksna and Yana. On the rafts are household utensils, livestock, huts.” The Rybinsk man-made sea is a living monument to the victims of the Volgolag, a reminder of the Stalinist regime, the Gulag system, which was only declared a crime against the people by the end of the 20th century.

People's resistance was slowly but surely broken. The relocation has begun. Walkers were selected for resettlement in the villages; they looked for suitable places and offered them to the residents. Mologa was assigned a place on a slip in the city of Rybinsk. And immediately the residents of the city and villages were divided into “displaced people”, “evictees” and “homeless people”. The strong huts of the “migrants” suitable for moving were rolled out log by log, each log was numbered to make it easier to reassemble the house later. They were transported on carts. Those who did not have time to transport their houses on dry land floated them down the river, log by log. They built rafts and moved houses across the water to their designated places of residence. Old Mologa huts with numbered logs still stand in villages near Rybinsk.

Numerous cases of “red tape and confusion, reaching the point of outright bullying” during relocation were described. But the worst situation was with the “street children” - old men and women who had no relatives and were unable to move independently.

The settlers recalled that during the flooding, frightened wild animals could be seen on the islands formed in the middle of the water, and out of pity people made rafts for them and felled trees to build a bridge “to the mainland.”
The newspaper “Big Volga” in its report “On the Rybinsk Sea” dated May 19, 1941 wrote:
“Forest birds and animals are retreating step by step to higher places and hillocks. But water from the flanks and rear bypasses the fugitives. Mice, hedgehogs, stoats, foxes, hares and even moose are driven by the water to the tops of the hillocks and try to escape by swimming or on the floating logs, peaks and branches left from cutting down the forest.