Once, long time ago, there was a town at Volga River.
It was called Mologa and many people came here every year for brisk trade fairs
and spectacular carnivals. But an evil water spirit got jealous and sent
violent waves to erase a beautiful city from the Earth…
That’s how we can start a sad fairy-tale about Russian
city Mologa. Or more precisely, about an eternal war between a merciless technical
progress and a natural way of living.
Mologa was a well-known city in Russia since the 12th
century. In 1321 there was organized a whole principality called Molozhskaya. Having
a very convenient location (on the junction of two rivers – Volga and Mologa),
this city became pretty quickly one of the most important Russian trade centers
with the Asian countries.
As the time was going, there were built factories and
banks, monasteries and churches (there was an impressive temple on the main
square), libraries and cinema. What is even more important, there were 900
houses with 7 thousand people peacefully living in them.
Nevertheless, on the 14th of September, 1935 Soviet
government decided to start building Rybinsk Reservoir and Rybinsk hydroelectric
plant. Mologa was destined to be flooded. 130 thousand people (including nearby
villages) were forced to move to Rybinsk.
This painful process was prolonged for 4 years. Sure,
people were said that it was necessary for the industry and transport; that it
had to be done for the sake of their country. Personally, I’m just trying to
imagine, how it feels to see your city where you grew up, where you worked,
where you used to watch movies and read in the library, goes under water street
by street, stone by stone.
Most of the houses were taken apart, moved to Rybinsk
and assembled again. Others were just blown up as many churches. The Leushinsky
monastery was left out though, and its walls stuck out right from the water
till they were destroyed by ice and waves.
This August the water level dropped in the Rybinsk
Reservoir, exposing the remains of what used to be a lively city. It also
reveals old questions: was the result worth this sacrifice? Were there other
ways, less radical, of solving the problem of the reservoir?
P.S. More pictures on the topic here: http://www.pravmir.ru/mologa-gorod-utoplennik-kotoryiy-inogda-vozvrashhaetsya/
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