Vologda [antikvár]

The Russian North is a land of broad rivers, clear lakes and denseforests, a land of charming wooden buildings and stone ensembles. The North has preserved in an excellent state the artistic relics of the distant and comparatively recent past. Vologda holds a place of its own in the history of the North and its artistic culture. For several centüries Vologda was the centre of an extensive region. At the same time it maintained constant relationS with other prominent Russian cities such as Novgorod and Moscow. This left an inimitable imprint on local artistic culture. Gradually, at first in the churches and the monasteries, and then in the local museums, splendid collections of works of art both of purely northern and of metropoütan origin were built up. As early as in the fourteenth and fifteenth centüries a local school ofart came into being in Vologda, and later, in the seventeenth to nineteenth centüries scores of most interesting stone and wooden churches, dwelling houses and whole estates were built. Vologda is a living museum city. No one coming to Vologda can help being impressed by the broad streets lined with birches and wild rose bushes, or the central districts of wooden two-storey houses with their fanciful architecture. A slow-flowing river runs through the city. Its limpid waters, broad bends, green banks give the city of Vologda its air of intimacy and sweet picturesqueness. I. VOLOGDA. ITS HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURAL MASTERPIECES. Vologda is one of the few northern cities whose history goes back to the pre-Mongol period. The approximate date of its foundation was 1147 when, according to the Life of the local holy man, St Gerasimus, Vologda's first monastery-the Troitsky-was founded. The Life, which was written not earlier than the seventeenth century, claimed that Vologda did not exist before 1147 and that Gerasimus came there to 'the great forest'. But this fact is very doubtful because before the fourteenth century Russian monasteries were usually founded in or near cities. So one can assume that even prior to that year there was a settlement in the neighbourhood. The archaeological excavations carried out near the former Troitsky Monastery showed1 that in the twelfth and thirteenth centüries there was in fact an ancient settlement which in time grew into a sizeable town. Vologda attracted the attention of its neighbours very early. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centüries there was a bittér fight for the possession of the city between Novgorod and the grand princes of north-eastern Rus. The first reliable mention of Vologda is in the deed of 1264 which defined the relationships between the city of Novgorod and Yaroslav Yaroslavich2, Grand Prince of Tver. Here Vologda is referred to as a volost or rural district of Novgorod. Various fourteenth and fifteenth centüries sources refer to the numerous campaigns of the princes of Tver and Moscow against Vologda in the attempt to oust the Novgorodians from Vologda, while the Novgorodians in their turn made every attempt to counter the influence of Tver and especially of Moscow on their northern provinces. For a considerable period the city was a real bone of contention. It was only in the fifteenth century that Vologda finally yielded to Moscow. The desire to subordinate Vologda was due to the city's favourable geographical position. It occupied a key position on the approaches to the immensely rich North. Situated comparatively close to Moscow and Novgorod, Vologda was alsó connected by waterways with the northern sea coast. The River Vologda, on the banks of which the city stands, discharges into the Sukhona, a tributary of the Northern Dvina-the main artery of the North. Vologda was a trans-shipping point for all goods brought from the north to the south and vice versa. Enterprising traders brought furs, salt, fish, wax, and hemp to the city, bought quantities of flax and hides there and then sent off large caravans of merchandise to Moscow, Rostov, YaroslavI, Kostroma and other Russian cities. Vologda was an important city from the strategic point of view. It served as an assembly point for troops, for example, when Moscow contemplated a campaign against the Dvina