B. M. Matveev A Tour Through Sestroretsk.

Sestroretsk. A bird’s-eye view. - http://sestroretsk.info/news/3024- fotorelaks-sestroreck- podpischiki-ssestroreck-s-vysoty-2000m

To see all or almost all showplaces in Sestroretsk in one day, one needs to come to this St. Petersburg’s suburb early in the morning on a suburban electric train from St. Petersburg-Finlyandsky railway station. Of course, you can drive in your own car. A car will allow considerably reducing the trip time, but will deprive you of the joy of an hours-long walk in the fresh air. Besides, a lot worth your attention will surely fly by. Many interesting details will be left unseen, with no time to think them through. In both cases, the most important thing is nice weather. We recommend you to start your introductory tour by getting off at Razliv station. A little right of the platform starts 2nd Poperechnaya Street which runs into 4th Tarkhovskaya Street. After reaching it, you need to turn left and then right to Yemelyanova Street.

1 Here lies the famous Saray Museum where soviet tourists used to be brought by buses from every corner of the Soviet Union back in the day. Nowadays, the museum is visited in an orderly manner by the local children during the school studies period. Which is a pity, since there is much interesting to see and learn at the Saray and nearby.

The Saray Museum. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

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A sculpture of V. I. Lenin at the Saray Museum A photo dated 05.03.2017.

The territory east of Razliv station limited by the railroad from the west, by 3rd Poperechnaya Street from the south, and by the Sestroretsk Razliv Lake from the east and north is a unique reserved place where old log cabins with windows decorated with carved frames built mostly in the last quarter of the XIX century still remain. Each year, their number decreases, but more and more architectural masterpieces appear, barely visible behind the tall stone fences. There is very little place to approach the bank of Sestroretsk Razliv here, since new real estate developers are particularly attracted by the waterside territories.

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The old houses of Sestroretsk locals near the Saray Museum. A photo dated 05.03.2017. In 1868, an enormous fire took place in Sestroretsk: within several hours, all that was left from most of the buildings was a pile of burning wreckage; even the cemetery with all its crosses and the church had burnt down. No more than 50 houses had remained in the whole settlement. In order to

5 avoid the reoccurrence of this tragedy, which had happened due to the crowding of wooden buildings, after the fire it was decided to expand the land lots for private housing. According to the verdict of the rural community as of August 18, 1898, only 320 house owners (out of 532) chosen by lot had been given land lots within the territory of the 33 burnt blocks of the settlement. The rest 219 homeless fire victims received land lots in Novye Mesta (New Places) marked off to the north of the former limits of the settlement along Vyborgskaya Road. These are the places that have endured to a considerable degree to this day within the blocks adjacent to the Razliv station between Poperechnaya and Tarkhovskaya streets. Even today, many houses are inhabited by the descendants of Sestroretsk gunsmiths who had built them in the seventies of the XIX century. After taking a walk though Poperechnaya and Tarkhovskaya streets, return to the station where several nearby cafes and stores will help you satisfy your hunger and thirst. The street named after famous Sestroretsk gunsmith S.I. Mosin1, which they are located on, is also a part of the “post-fire” layout and real estate development of the town. It also has several remaining old houses from the late XIX century, but they are mostly rebuilt to a great extent. After walking down this street, you will end up on a dam that separates Zavodskoy Basin from the Vodoslivnoy Channel at the drop point. By the late XVIII century, irreversible large-scale alterations had occurred in the dune terrain to the south of Sestroretsk. The easily eroded soil in this area as well as unreliability of the waterside structures combined with their ineffective maintenance had led to the forming of a wide and deep hollow coming from Zavodskoy Basin directly to the cove located in the south-eastern part of Dubkovskaya Spit. Some maps of the first half of the XVIII century picture a short creek at the location of this hollow flowing from the western slope of the sand ridge and ending in the swampy waterside lowland. The bed of this creek was later repeatedly expanded and deepened with the flow of water breaking from Sestroretsk Lake during spring floods. The first major outbreak on the right (western) bank of Zavodskoy Basin happened “near the dam” in 1756, during which some factories had been completely torn down (including the mint built under the plant in 1752 for recoining old money) while others were significantly damaged by strong water pressure.

1 Sergei Ivanovich Mosin (1849 – 1902) is a Russian engineer and arms production organizer, a Major General of the Russian Army. Mosin had developed his first internal magazine-fed rifles in 1853. For example, he modified the Berdan rifle by attaching an eight-round magazine to it. In 1899, Mosin offered a 3-line caliber (7.62 mm) rifle, based on his own previously designed single-shot one, for a contest. On April 16, 1891, Emperor Alexander III approved of the prototype crossing out the word “Russian”, so the rifle was ordered into production under the name of “3-line rifle M1891”. The production began in 1892 at Tula, Izhevsk and Sestroretsk arms plants. The original design of the rifle had been altered in the process of production and usage already within the first few years after it was put into commission. For his work, S.I. Mosin was given the colonel rank. On April 21, 1894, Chairman of the Admission Board of the Tula Arms Plant Colonel S. I. Mosin was appointed the head of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant. In 1900, the 3-line rifle M1891 received the Grand Prize of Exposition Universelle in Paris. It had remained in service in the Red Army from the moment it was created and until the end of the Great Patriotic War. After the war, the rifles remained in military schools. A considerable number of rifles was handed over to DOSAAF and used for gunnery training and basic military training. 6 A new outbreak of Zavodskoy Basin took place in 1807. Within two hours, the place known as “the drop point” became a 40-sazhen-wide river (84 meters). The water had plowed up the nearby area and flowed to Gagarka Creek carrying entire sand hills with it. On the third day, by eroding the right bank of the shaped riverbed, the water broke to the north through a sand hill into the hollow surrounding the commander’s garden, which possibly was the old riverbed of the River Sestra, and joined the flow from the downward dam after paving its way to the waterbed of the Zavodskaya river. The break in the riverbank was soon closed. In 1833, it was replaced with a stone drop structure with a spillway. But the newly built structure was washed out and destroyed in the spring the same year. The water created a 100-sazhen-long water gall (210 meters) and washed away several adjacent buildings, further extending and deepening the hollow created in 1807, and rushed into the Gulf of Finland. This time, the break had been closed with a solid stone dam. Another powerful outbreak of the River Sestra happened north of Sestroretsk. In the early XIX century, a dam and a flood-gate had been built where the river made a sharp turn to the south, and behind them – a drainage channel intended for regulating the water level of the reservoir in case of high water. In 1840, upon washing away the artificial barrier, the river rushed through the drainage channel directly into the gulf not only bypassing the water reservoir but also carrying a part of the water that flowed into it from the Chyornaya River. While prior to this outbreak the flow of the River Sestra had been equally distributed along its natural riverbed for 15-20 kilometers, in the new riverbed the same amount of water was running downward from the same height within only 2 kilometers. The significantly accelerated flow started rapidly demolishing not only the soft sand bottom and banks of the drainage channel but also of the main riverbed. All the attempts of stopping the water flow had failed. Within several years, the width of the river in its almost 8-verst-long lower part (8.5 kilometers) had expanded from 6 to 20 sazhens (from 12.8 to 42.6 meters). The overflow of water from the reservoir was soon stopped by a hastily built check dam in the south part of the old riverbed left by the river. However, since 1840, Sestroretsk Razliv had been deprived of its main influx for almost a quarter of a century and filled with water only by the River Chyornaya.

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The Gausman Dam. A postcard from the early XX century. The forces of nature continued inflicting enormous damage on the built structures. In autumn and winter, when west winds were blowing, the water flowed upward from the seashore and flooded the Kanonirsky District and Dubki. Every spring, when the water level in the lake grew, almost all houses in the south-eastern part of the settlement on Razlivnaya Street were flooded. In some courtyards, water remained even in summer, and the amount of it in the middle of the street required a boat to get across. On the other hand, during dry years, the water level in Sestroretsk Razliv Lake dropped greatly threatening to disrupt the work of the plant.

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The Gausman Dam. A photo dated 05.03.2017. The construction of a new complex of water-development structures for regulating the water level of the reservoir filled by rivers Sestra and Chyornaya was entrusted by the plant administration to the engineer K. F. Gausman. His first project designed in 1850 was not implemented. The second version which included the construction of a solid dam in the drainage channel and a stone wasteway at the “drop point” was put into effect ten years later. The construction works were held from 1859 to 1863. At the “drop point”, the colossal new structure with a wasteway was lifted 10 meters above the water level. The dam was 150 meters long and 12 meters wide. The pile gaps at the base of the foundation were for the first time ever filled with concrete, the front pieces of land abutments and piers were coated with granite, and escarps and platforms were paved with cobblestone. In 1884-1888, the Gausman Dam (the Drop Point Dam) was reconstructed with preserved coating in accordance with its historical design, and it is still serving its functions. The new majestic Church of Holy Preeminent Apostles Peter and Paul is standing out in all its beauty on the bank of Zavodskoy Basin.

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The Church of Holy Preeminent Apostles Peter and Paul. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

The first wooden Church of Peter and Paul was built in Sestroretsk in 1722-1725. It had burnt down in 1730. The stone Church of Peter and Paul was built in 1781 from the materials left from the dilapidated palace of Emperor Peter I in Dubovaya Grove. It had burnt down in 1868. On July 12 (24), 1871, the foundation of a new stone Church of Peter and Paul was laid upon the design of the architect G. I. Karpov. The funds for the construction of the church were partly allocated by Emperor Alexander II and the Synod, the rest were donated. It was solemnly blessed on June 9 (21), 1874. The church was closed in 1931 and dismantled in 1932-1933.

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The Church of Peter and Paul. A postcard from the early XX century.

The modern orthodox church was built on a new spot in the memory of Russian submariners and blessed on October 11, 2009 by Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' Kirill. The architectural design was created by the St. Petersburg architect E. F. Shapovalova. The location for the church was chosen for a reason. In the times of Emperor Peter I, the first Russian prototype of a submarine – “a hidden ship” – was tested in 1721 in Lake Razliv. In order to immortalize this place and this event, in 2000, Sestroretsk submariners initiated the construction of a small wooden chapel of St Nicholas the Wonderworker with capsules laid in its foundation containing earth from all the places of deployment and construction of submarines in Russia.

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Lake Razliv (Zavodskoy Basin). A view from the Gausman Dam. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

On the opposite side of Zavodskoy Basin stands a well-visible building which used to be Inturist Technical School No. 131, then – Technical School No. 120 which was considered the successor of Crafts School founded in 1899 under the Sestroretsk Arms Plant. The building was constructed in 1977 upon the design project or architects of LenZNIIEP Institute V. N. Kamensky and V. G. Khotin. The educational institution of all-Soviet Union significance was opened prior to the 1980 Olympic Games. It was an institution for training restaurant and hotel service specialists. In 2011, Technical School was transformed into a vocational school to train specialists for the Sestroretsk Tool Plant such as machine setup men, mill operators, and NC unit repairmen. Today, this institution trains vehicle mechanics, cooks, confectioners, and managers. Apart from the vocational school, the building contains various administrative, educational and sports organizations: the Municipal Council, the Administration and the Electoral Commission of Sestroretsk, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigation Department of the Kurortny District, the Interdistrict Department No. 1 of the Department of the Federal Migration Service of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, freestyle wrestling and judo gyms of Voskhod Youth Center of the Kurortny District.

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VAO Inturist Technical School No. 131 - Technical School No. 120 - Sestroretsk Vocational School n. a. C. I. Mosin. A view from Lake Razliv. - http://www.citywalls.ru/

At the crossing of Mosina Street you can see the Plant Manager’s House. A monument in honor of the famous gunmaker is installed in the public garden in front of it. In the 1770s-1780s, the architect K. I. Shpekle had built new stone production and storage buildings as well as the wooden house of plant manager H. Eyler. This house consisted of an entire mansion complex which, apart from the main residential unit, included stables, barns and other outbuildings. In 1781, a servants’ house was built to the south-west of the wooden house of the plant manager. Later, this building was adapted to become the plant manager’s residency since the old wooden one had dilapidated and had been dismantled.

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The Plant Manager’s House. A photo dated 05.03.2017. In front of the house, there was a garden with raspberry, currant, mountain ash, lilac, bird cherry and linden. It had channels always filled with current water, a fountain, a pavilion, a greenhouse, hot frames, and multiple fruit trees. In the back of the garden, there were planting beds with vegetables. The building had been repeatedly repaired and reconstructed on the inside. In the 20s of the XX century, it became the Factory Club n. a. V. I. Lenin. During summer, the club used to focus its work in the garden renamed to Recreation Garden. A lilac alley led from the club building to the central glade with a summer theatre and a well-equipped stage. A military enlistment office was located in the club in the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. Speeches were made from the balcony, after which the columns of recruits headed to the railway station with constantly departing troop trains. Some stone outbuildings of the Plant Manager’s House had remained until the early 1960s. They were gone by the early 1980s, but until then the wooden annex of the main building, including an external staircase (possibly rebuilt by that moment) which led into the annex of the north-west frontage, had remained unchanged. The two-storey double-axis annex connected to it was built in the end of the XX century. A reconstruction was held in 2009. In doing so, the two-storey annex of the south-west frontage was rebuilt in bricks and further coated with batten with a decorative frame. On the same occasion, the silicate annex on the north-west side of the building was plastered, the molding and plaster decorations on the frontages were restored, and the previously blocked window openings were opened. On the same occasion, the previously lost portal with a balcony on the central

14 axis of the eastern frontage was restored, the foundation was enhanced, the socle was coated with limestone, and the roof ridge was lifted by 0.62 meters. The layout of both floors was completely changed; the attic started being used thanks to the lifted roof ridge. The historic wooden staircases – the main one with banisters and the back one with a grill guard – had been lost. The semicircular dormer-windows had not been restored during the replacement of roof cladding. The wooden spans were replaced with heavy reinforced concrete slabs unsuited for the building dimensions; the wooden rafter system was replaced with a metal one. The shaped ceiling moldings inside the premises had been lost. The garden of the Plant Manager’s House had not been repaired or restored.

The Plant Manager’s House and the Sestroretsk Arms (Tool) Plant. - http://s017.radikal.ru/i421/1202/96/f6315d26841c.jpg After turning right from Mosina Street to Voskova Street2, you will be walking past the buildings of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant. The territory of the plant is limited by the eastern bank of the Solyanoy (Salt) Channel (named Zavodskoy Channel on the late ХХ century maps of St. Petersburg and the Malaya Sestra River on modern maps) from the east, and Voskova Street following the bank of the artificial lake (Zavodskoy Basin) – from the south. The main south frontage of the building ensemble was originally facing the lake. Here stands the remaining Plant

2 Semen Petróvich Voskov (real name – Samuil; 1889-1920) is a Russian revolutionary. In March, 1918, he was appointed the Supplies Commissar of the Commune Union of the Northern Region. From November, 1918 to March, 15 Administration building made in the “brick” style and built in 1898 at the location of former buildings of the late XVIII century – the office and the guardhouse. This entrance core of the plant ensemble was flanked in the XVIII century with semicircular shops and later – with semicircular brick fences which had replaced them (dismantled in the second half of the XIX century). The part of the historic section of the plant to the north of the entrance zone has maintained its historic layout made in the “brick” style and formed from the second half of the XIX century to the 1910s. The buildings have maintained their historic massing and frontage decorations, several flaky staircases, lantern lights, and a part of internal metal frame structures (partly lost, partly dilapidated). In 1714, during a trip to Kotlin Island, Peter the Great set his eyes on the area on the banks of the River Sestra rich with wood – both construction and fuel material; most importantly, the power of the Sestra River could be used by building a dam. Obviously, it was at that moment that Peter I decided to build an armory here, close to the new capital. The first evidence of the shipping of materials “to the dam construction point on the River Sestra” dates back to 1719. In accordance with instructions of Peter I, it was built 2.5 kilometers down from the confluence of rivers Chyornaya and Sestra. The uprising water had flooded a considerable part of a vast plain turning it into an artificial lake named Razliv (Overflow) by the locals. Its western bank followed the eastern slopes of a sand ridge. Due to the complexity of the terrain, a relatively big and meridionally stretched bay had formed right before the dam (to the south of it) between high sand hills; it also had creeky banks, the shapes of which would significantly change later on. In the documents of XVIII – XIX centuries, it was called Zavodskoy Basin, or simply the Basin. This bay had covered the floodplain of the river from the point where it made a sharp turn to the north up to the constructed dam. The water drained from it through the dam outlet started setting the wheels of the armory’s machinery in motion and running further into the sea through the old riverbed of Sestra named the Zavodskaya river. 1920, he had fought in the Civil War. He died of typhus on March 14, 1920, in Taganrog. In 1922, the Sestroretsk Arms Plant was named after S. P. Voskov.

16 The construction of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant began in June of 1721. The plant was visited by Vilim de Gennin, a mining, metallurgy and arms engineers and the manager of the Olonets works; Olonets woodworkers, appointed by Peter the Great for the construction, were also brought to the plant. The opening ceremony of the Sestroretsk Plant was held on January 27, 1724, though it took two more years for the top-priority works to end. The settlement founded at the same time was located on a relatively small territory situated to the north-east of the armory between the banks of the Zavodskaya River, Sestroretsk Lake and Zavodskoy Basin. The regular nature of its layout and development was entirely subject to Peter’s decrees which regulated the management of “migratory settlements”. The limits of this settlement were originally outlined in the form of an almost regular polygon with its long sides coming from the south-west to the north-east. Its territory was divided by two end-to-end “perspective” passages into three blocks each of which was marked off into land lots of the same size. This layout core eventually became adjacent to new blocks coming from all directions, the outer limits of which had also been drawn along straight red lines, which had nothing to do with the river bank shapes, up until the middle of the XIX century. The first residents were brought here by Peter I from the Olonets Arms Plant and Petrozavodsk. Among the privileges given to the craftsman in 1725 were 6 desyatinas (6.5 hectares) of land for cattle pasture and haymaking along with the right for free wood harvesting to furnish and heat their houses. The main buildings of the plant had been constructed from 1721 to 1726. In 1722, Peter I ordered the construction of a small wooden palace with 12 rooms and a gazebo on a hill by the plant close to the dam from which he could observe the Gulf of Finland and the outskirts. This palace had stood on the top of a sand hill for over half a century. In 1777, it was dismantled “due to its complete decay”.

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The Sestroretsk Arms Plant reconstruction project. The 1780s. - RGVIA. F. VUA. D. 64762.

In 1778-1789, all the wooden buildings at the Sestroretsk Plant had been gradually replaced with stones ones “of great durability and rather beautiful architecture”. The system of channels of the 1st half of the XVIII century had changed already in late XVIII - mid-XIX centuries during the reconstruction of the plant and the stone dam. A part of transversal channels and a part of the longitudinal channel had been lost. New channels – diagonal and longitudinal – were created in the north-eastern part of the district. The first significant reconstructions of old stone buildings were conducted in the 1830s-1840s. In the early 1850s, the former bondman Ivan Ovsov and peasant of the Chukhlovmskoy District of the Kostroma Region Dmitry Zubov had built a public road to Dubkovskaya Pier (currently the western part of Voskova Street and Dubkovsky Highway) upon an agreement with the Department of Military Settlements. The first straight unsurfaced road led from the main entrance of the plant through the reserved oak grove to the embankment of the Gulf of Finland and was 1,410 running fathoms long (about 3 kilometers). As the production expanded from the second half of the XIX century to the early XX century,

18 the plant buildings had been reconstructed and rebuilt, numerous new buildings were constructed instead of the old ones and in empty land lots and the developed territory had expanded in the northern direction. The original layout of the plant and the architectural solution had been distorted. The main development of this period was made in the “brick” style. Between 1898 and 1904, only the side channels had remained from the filled up transversal riverbed as a new flood-gate and a water power plant were built in Zavodskoy Basin. The underground channels were filled up by 1914 and replaced with new buildings during the construction of which the remains of channel structures had been destroyed.

The new flood-gate in Zavodskoy Basin. A photo dated 05.03.2017. Starting with 1922, the plant had completely switched to producing cutting and measuring tools along with arranging the production of fitting and assembly tools, and was renamed to the Sestroretsk Tool Plant. In 1923, upon the request of the personnel, it was named after S. P. Voskov – the first chairman of plant’s trade-union committee. As the Great Patriotic War began, the plant was evacuated to Novosibirsk; the rest of the equipment was moved to Leningrad along with launching the production of the Degtyaryov machine pistol from the remaining materials on the spot. A consumer goods production workshop was created in 1953: the plant started producing hand plates, scrub planes, block planes and handsaws. The production of machine-tools for the diamond industry was launched in 1962. The repair, power, heat and ventilation, transport and woodworking workshops were reconstructed in 1969-1972 along with repairing the utility network. In the 1970s, the plant had switched to using computerized numerical control units. 19 A monument of Military Glory was opened on the territory of the plant in 1975. The workshop buildings were decorated with memorial plates in the memory of the Red Guard soldiers V. I. Zofa, N. A. Kubyaka, S. P. Voskov, working man N. A. Yemelyanov, who had sheltered Lenin and G. E. Zinovyev in Lake Razliv, as well as F. F. Chistyakov and Hero of the Soviet Union L. N. Borisov (former workers of the plant). The People’s Plant History Museum was functioning, mass-circulation newspaper “Sestroretsk Toolmaker” was being published.

The Plant Management building. A photo dated 05.03.2017. JSC SIZ (Sestroretsk Tool Plant) was registered in 1991; in 1999, the plant was reorganized into a holding company consisting of several joint-stock companies based on workshops producing high-demand goods. As of January 1, 2001, JSC Sestroretsk Tool Plant included 9 subsidiary enterprises. Since 2007, the only remaining tool producer working under the Sestroretsk Tool Plant brand is CJSC SIZ Prom located in the Konnaya Lakhta industrial zone. The process of transformation of the plant territory into a multifunctional public, business and residential complex began in 2008. The restored Plant Manager’s House became its first object. According to the design project, the formerly closed and even classified territory of the plant will become a residential district in the center of Sestroretsk with preserved appearance of plant’s historic buildings. On October 30, 2009, all the production operations at the plant were shut down, all the workers were fired.

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The Officers’ House. A photo dated 05.03.2017. On Svobody Square opposite of the plant building stands the Officers’ House built for military engineers working at the plant in the second half of the XIX century and the Kurornty District Administration building constructed upon the design project of the architect V. N. Shcherbin on the territory of demolished old city blocks in 1974.

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The Kurornty District Administration building. A photo dated 05.03.2017. The reconstruction of old city blocks of Sestroretsk began in 1962 after the city development project for the next 20 years had been approved. The Sestroretsk – Gorskaya – Lisiy Nos district planning project developed at Lengiprogor Institute included a set of propositions for creating a large district for massive recreation. The main idea of the project was turning old ill-provided suburban settlements into a comfortable resort. The entire territory of the district – over 5 thousand hectares – was accurately divided into three different zones in accordance with their functional purposes. The main area was allocated for the short-time recreation zone. It covers a considerable territory along the shoreline of the Gulf of Finland, the villages of Tarkhovka, Aleksandrovskaya, Gorskaya and Lisiy Nos, as well as the undeveloped area near Lake Razliv. The second functional zone lies to the north near Kurort (Resort) station also located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. It is a zone of mixed – both long and short-term – recreation. The third zone was allocated for residential buildings. It was formed on the basis of the town of Sestroretsk and intended mainly for the servicing personnel of recreation facilities. The design project implied the creation of an accurate system of artery roads connecting the zones as well as the adjustment and development of the whole existing street network. In accordance with the plan approved in the second half of the 1960s and in the 1970s, large- scale works had been conducted for the reconstruction of the old core of Sestroretsk, i.e. the territory located between the Sestroretsk Plant and the bank of Sestroretsk Razliv Lake. The detailed planning project of the central part of Sestroretsk was designed already in 1961 in workshops No. 5 and 10 of Lenproekt Institute (under the supervision of Chief Architect R. E. Khusid). After that, in 1965, 22 architects V. V. Popov, S. A. Ushakov and E. N. Smirnova of workshop No. 6 developed a project of compositional development of the central ensemble of the town including the area between Lake Razliv, Voskova Street and Primorskaya Freeway. The implementation of these projects had completely changed the appearance of the historic core of the town. New maximally enlarged city blocks with high-rise apartment buildings were created on the basis of using a limited catalogue of standardized buildings. The main traffic arteries were fundamentally reconstructed. The through traffic was removed outside the limits of residential districts onto a new highway laid along the shoreline of Sestroretsk Lake. The triangular public garden created at the intersection of Volodarsky 3 and Kreshchenskaya (one of the few names that had remained since the pre-revolution times) streets is adjacent to the north-eastern frontage of the P. E. Kolachov Hotel built in the early 1870s. This building and the Officers’ house are all that has remained from the old historic building system of the Sestroretsk center.

The P. E. Kolachov Hotel. A photo dated 14.12.2012. The construction of new residential buildings for the personnel of the Voskov Plant began already in the 1950s. It was at that point that the appearance of the old city blocks on both sides of Volodarsky Street, built up with two, three and four-storey houses, had been changed. On Volodarsky Street, you might take note of the building of School No. 541 constructed upon the design project of architects L. E. Ass and A. S. Gintsberg in 1955 in the Stalinist Empire style – a standardized and extensively used design. The famous “Ant-Hill House” is towering at the end of

3 V. Volodarsky (real name Moisey Markovich Golsstein; 1891-1918) is a figure of the Russian revolutionary movement. 23 the street. The residential building complex facing Lake Razliv and built upon the design project of architects N. M. Zakharyina, I. A. Solodovnikov, G. I. Buryakov and B. M. Troshin in 1975-1977 rises up in 6-16-storey-high ledges. It was also known as the Sestroretsk Pyramide – the first high- rise apartment building within the Leningrad suburbs.

The building of School No. 541. A photo dated 14.12.2012.

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The “Ant-Hill House”. A photo dated 14.12.2012. Another cultural heritage object – the building of former catholic shelter Marianum – is located at the intersection of Volodarsky and Borisova 4 streets. It was built in 1907-1908 upon the design project of the architect A. S. Pronin. Now it is a child health clinic.

4 Leonid Nikolaevich Borisov (1915 - 1945) is a Sestroretsk native; he worked as a locksmith at the Karl Marx Plant, later - in his native city at the S.P. Voskov Plant. In 1941, he took the Red Commander course in Leningrad, after finishing which he was given the junior lieutenant rank. On February 1, 1945, he repeated the legendary heroic deed of Alexander Matrosov. During the offensive on the Western (left) bank of the Oder river near Briesen (2 kilometers to the north-west of Brzeg, Poland), company commander Borisov blocked the firing port of an enemy’s machine gun bunker with his body as he led his troops into battle. According to the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR as of 27, 1945, L. N. Borisov was posthumously awarded the distinction Hero of the Soviet Union. 25

The building of former catholic shelter Marianum. A photo dated 05.03.2017. Borisova Street will lead you to a pedestrian bridge over the Malaya Sestra River.

The pedestrian bridge over the Malaya Sestra River. A photo dated 05.03.2017. The 74-kilometer-long Sestra River starts among the Lembolovsky swamps and flows towards the Gulf of Finland twisting among the woods. 3-4 kilometers before reaching it near the modern

26 village of Repino, its makes a sharp turn and flows for over 15 kilometers in parallel with the gulf’s shoreline, after which it turns sharply again and runs into the gulf after flowing for several kilometers in the opposite direction. The issue of where the Sestra’s mouth used to be located earlier causes arguments to this day. The Malaya Sestra River runs into the gulf near the village of Dyuny joining the Rzhavaya Kanava River down its stream. In its midstream, it gives rise to the Vodoslivnoy (Spillway) Channel, which is more full-flowing than the main riverbed, and runs into the gulf north of the Sestroretsk Resort. The second Vodoslivnoy Channel (which used to be called the Vodootvodny (Drainage) Channel) flows from Zavodskoy Basin through the Gausman Dam. After crossing the river, you will enter the suburban area of Sestroretsk.

The Malaya Sestra River. A photo dated 05.03.2017. Grigory Moskvin’s guide, published in the early ХХ century and well-known among local historians, states: “The suburban area of Sestroretsk numbers approximately 350 cottages with the total number of rooms around 1,200. Most of the cottages are not marked by luxury and comfort, but all of them are more or less well-furnished and have a small garden, a terrace or a balcony. Thanks to the great geographical position and healthy climate, Sestroretsk is undoubtedly in the first place among all cottage places in the St. Petersburg suburbs”. Almost no trace of the former luxury has remained except for the name of Yermolovsky Avenue.5 After turning right from it, we enter Maxima Gorkogo street leading to the railway. This used to be Yermolovskaya railway station. It

5 The avenue was named Yermolovsky before the revolution in honor of Minister of Agriculture and State Properties A. S. Yermolov who had held this post from 1894 to 1905. 27 hasn’t endured either. The area adjacent to Yermolovskaya railway station between Sestroretskaya (which was located along the left bank of the Sestra) and Avenariusskaya (which used to follow the railway from Yermolovskaya station to the railway bridge over the Sestra river) streets, where the most luxurious cottages were located, was unofficially named “Bogachi” (Rich Men) under which it was constantly mentioned in legal documents of the early XX century along with other place-name toponyms. The people living here today are also far from poor and prefer more contemporary cottages.

Yermolovskaya railway station. A postcard from the early XX century.

The Primorskaya Railway was built in the last decade of the XIX century. In 1885, member of the town council, major banker and managing director of the executive board of the Nevskaya Suburban Horse-Drawn Tram P. A. Avenarius offered the City Duma to build a horse-drawn tram along the north-eastern cost of the Gulf of Finland for transporting cargo and passengers. The end of 1889 marked the creation of the Joint-Stock Company of the Primorskaya St. Petersburg- Sestroretsk Railway chaired by P. A. Avenarius. The original concept implied the construction of a horse-drawn tram between St. Petersburg and Sestroretsk. The enactment of the construction of the railway confirmed on January 30, 1890, implied the possibility of using mechanical traction. The new requirements for the construction and maintenance of the Primorskaya Railway, which allowed running the railway with possible usage of steam traction, with an established 3-year construction duration were confirmed on February 11, 1892. The traffic through the 6.4-verst-long advance section of the tracks from Novaya village to 28 Ozerki village was opened in August, 1893. Three more sections were put into commission within the next year: on June 12 – to Lakhta, on October 31 – to Lisiy Nos, on November 26 – to Sestroretsk. After the railway reached the unsurfaced road at the exit from Staraya Derevnya, it followed the right side of the road to the very Sestroretsk except Lakhta village where the railway tracks had been laid in the middle of the street. The total length of the tracks amounted to 28.6 versts (a 25.6-verst-long one-lane section from Novaya Derevnya to Sestroretsk and a 3-verst-long two-lane section from Razliv platform to Yermolovskaya platform). In addition, up to six versts of station tracks and a 5- verst-long branch railway line leading to Ozerki had been laid. 6 station buildings had been constructed (in St. Petersburg and Sestroretsk – upon the original design projects involving P.A. Avenarius, in Ozerki and Lisiy Nos – in accordance with the standardized 4th-class railway station design) along with 10 open railway platforms. A trip from St. Petersburg to Sestroretsk now took only an hour and a half. A 2.5-verst-long branch railway line leading to the Finlyandsky Railway through Serdobolsky platform to Flyugov Razyezd platform was built later in 1904. At the railway crossing, Maxima Gorkogo Street merges into Andreyeva Street.6 To the left lies Verkhny Park. In the beginning of the 1980s, the state-owned land in the Kanonirskaya part of the Sestroretsk State-Owned Forest Estate7, which used to belong to the Artillery Department, were divided into 102 land lots intended to be leased for cottage construction. In time, they became known as Kanonirskie Land Lots. The Kanonerskaya Grove included parks – Verkhny (Upper), Sredny (Middle) and Nizhny (Lower), which represented well-developed natural forests. The presence of these woodlands became the distinctive feature of this area. The residential and service buildings were constructed on

6 Former Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. It was renamed after Soviet combat leader Andrey Matveyevich Andreyev (1905- 1983) – a Soviet Army Colonel General and Hero of the Soviet Union. In September of 1941, Colonel Andreyev was appointed to command the 43rd Rifle Division, and on October 25 took command of the 86th Rifle Division. He took part in the combat operations in the Nevsky Pyatachok. On January 15, 1945, the 125th Rifle Corps under his command successfully crossed the Vistula River north of Warsaw following the defense breakthrough battle, and after an offensive freed the city together with other army units by January 17. During the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation, a rifle corps under Andreyev’s command closed the Berlin encirclement from the west and freed Potsdam after several hours of offensive. After the war, A.M. Andreyev had been in command of military districts in the Soviet Union, then served in Eastern block states as the representative of the Commander-In-Chief of the Forces of Warsaw Pact countries. In August of 1963, he was appointed the Head of Military Institute of Foreign Languages (currently Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Colonel General Andrey Matveyevich Andreyev remained at the disposal of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR since August of 1973 and retired in November the same year. He died in Moscow on November 17, 1983. He was buried in the Kuntsevo Cemetery. 7 The Kanonirka area covered with conifer forests and located between the Sestra river, the Gulf of Finland and Dubkovsky Highway had remained almost untouched by the first half of the XIX century. It received its name in the Peter the Great times, when the harbor built in the mouth of the Sestra was constantly guarded by watchmen assigned to canons and called cannoneers. At the turn of the 1860s-1870s, the Kanonirsky District served as the place for a newly formed residential district in the beginning of Bolshaya Kanonerskaya Street heading north from Dubkovsky Highway. A. Broun had stressed in his “Story of Sestroretsk Volost” published in 1875 that the city was located half a verst “from the coastline and almost entirely built on the banks of Sestroretsk Water Reservoir” with only “the new part of the settlement, around 40 houses, located in the woods 1/4 versts away from the Gulf of Finland”. 29 the marked off cottage land lots in the midst of century-old conifers that leaseholders strived to preserve acknowledging that they were exactly what gave a great value to the cottage territory.

The layout of the “Sestroretsk coastal cottage area”. 1911. The land lots were sold during auctions held in the building of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property in St. Petersburg. The area of a standard suburban land lot allocated on the state- owned land amounted to 570 square sazhens, which was equal approximately to 0.3 desyatinas or 0.4 hectares. Arpentators tried to shape them into regular polygons. However, depending on the terrain, the land lot territory could be increased or decreased, and the shapes of their boundaries could turn into multi-sided geometrical figures of various forms. The land lot sizes affected the starting price set by auction organizers. It was also affected by the land quality and the number and value of trees on it, so two adjacent land lots of the same size came in different lease prices. The lease right was given to the auction winner who had offered the best price. The “Requirements” for leasing these land lots common for all state-owned land still remain in such auction’s file. A land lot allocated for “development of cottage premises” was leased for 99 years. Every 12 years the Ministry of Agriculture and State Property could raise the lease cost but not more than by 5% of the rent of the previous 12 years. The leaseholder was obliged to fence his land lot along its limits within the first lease year, and if he was leasing several adjacent land lots, he had to fence the whole area “with solid fence and then constantly maintain it in good order”. Several authentic cottages have remained to this day from the former Kanonirskie Land Lots of the early XX century. The cottage of famous doctor Lev Klyachko built upon the design project of the architect C. G. Ginger in 1907-1908 is located on the territory of the Detskie Dyuny (Children’s Dunes) Sanatorium (7, Lesnaya Street). The cottage had burnt down in 1991 after which

30 it was restored. It is currently out of use due to the long-drawn restoration of its interiors.

The cottage of L.M. Klyachko. - http://p1.citywalls.ru The remains of architectural monuments on Andreyeva Street look sad. Here you can see the cottage of V. I. Vazhevskaya which demonstrates an egregious example of a “thoughtful” attitude of new real estate developers to the heritage. The wooden cottage built in 1907 supposedly upon the design project of the architect C. G. Ginger in consideration with traditions of Russian folk architecture with modernist style elements used to have the architectural repute of a “Fairytale House”. This cottage had been rented by a visiting summer kindergarten for many years. State Budgetary Educational Institution “Olympic Reserve”, after receiving the house and the enormous land lot behind it, the assiduous owners launched a construction on the territory adjacent to the railway and cleared from old houses, but they are not rushing to start the restoration of the cultural heritage object evidently waiting for its natural end. Judging by the decay dynamics, they won’t have to wait long. The same can be said about the ownerless Shalyapin Pavilion which was actually built by merchant Shelepin. Its exact copy is mounted at the highway exit leading to Sestroretsk, and the original is rotting in its historical place. No funds seem to be available to set a glass pavilion over it as the one standing over the shed of the leader of the world proletariat.

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The cottage of V. I. Vazhevskaya. A photo dated 11.04.2010.

The cottage of V. I. Vazhevskaya. A photo dated 09.02.2013.

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The cottage of V. I. Vazhevskaya. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

The Shalyapin Pavilion. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

33 The fate of house No. 3 on Andreyeva Street built in 1902 in the neo-Russian style is just as sad. Since 1902, it was owned by Lyudomir Zmigorodsky, and since 1916 – by his daughter Valentina.8 After the Revolution, it was turned into a shared apartment building. The partly inhabited house caught fire at 14 o’clock on January 3, 2010. The fire was put out by 17 o’clock, the firemen managed to save the supporting structures of the first and partly of the second floor including the turrets (the colored stained-glass windows have remained intact on one of them - the right one). The stained-glass windows in the right turret were partly destroyed by vandals from April to September of 2010. The ones in the left turret had been completely destroyed during the fire. No attempts of restoration have been made since then.

8 The names of the owners are stated in accordance with the information published on the terijoki.spb.ru website. 34

Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. A postcard from the early XX century. (The Zmigorodsky House is in the front.)

Zheleznodorozhnaya Street. A postcard from the early XX century. (The Shalyapin Pavilion is in the front.)

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The Zmigorodsky House. A photo dated 05.03.2017. The front gates leading to the park of the Sestroretsk Resort has remained at the very end of Andreyeva Street, behind the railway. The assimilation of this territory began in the 70s of the XIX century.

Andreyeva Street, the gates leading to the park of the Sestroretsk Resort. A photo dated 05.03.2017.

36 The Finlyandskaya Railway which was built in 1867-1870 and had connected St. Petersburg with Helsingfors (Helsinki) through the Riihimäki hub station could significantly improve the transport connection with the capital of Sestroretsk the population of which had reached six thousand people by the time. This required building an additional branch railway line starting at Beloostrov station with approximate length of 6 versts. The practicability of this construction was also confirmed by strategic goals given that during this period the Russian government, which was preparing for the war for the Balkans, had placed big orders with the Sestroretsk Arms Plant. So the military ministry’s request for the construction of the branch railway line was granted. The construction of the Beloostrov – Sestroretsk railway and its further maintenance were entrusted to the Direction of the Finnish State Railways. The line was opened for traffic on November 1, 1871. The trip began in Beloostrov behind the borderline railway bridge over the Sestra River short of the Rajajoki railway station. After that the lane ran through the Finnish territory to Sestroretsk along the River Sestra again crossing the border once more near the Rzhavaaya Kanava River. Since the plant was located in the lowlands protected from the lake by the dam, the railway itself ended opposite of it, on Peski. The first maintenance year had brought nothing but expenses, and the Direction was planning to remove it from service. Suddenly, collegiate assessor M. von-Dezen and titular counsellor M. I. Miller stood out as businessmen. They decided to buy the Beloostrov – Sestroretsk branch railway line out from the Finnish State Railways and use it to organize passenger transportation. In addition, their plans included the construction of a new pier 3 versts away from Sestroretsk, on the coast of Sestroretsk Bay as well as an additional branch railway line heading to the Tarkhovskaya Spit where a pier had already been built and put into commission. The Regulations of the Sestroretsk Railway Society were approved in January, 1873, and on April 19, 1875, the Society took possession of the railway. The rolling stock was rented from the Finnish State Railways. There were four pairs of passenger trains in operation. The amount of plant’s shippings turned out to be insignificant due to the confrontational pricing policy carried out by the Finnish State Railways. At the same time, M. I. Miller received permission to build a port in the mouth of the Sestra River for unloading big ships sailing to St. Petersburg with coal (as their ballast) and intended for shipping exportable grain. The artificial bay was supposed to be equipped with a “closed scoop” and adjusted for simultaneous unloading of four ships with cargo capacity of up to 5,000 tons each. The construction of a crib dam intended to block the water area and soon named Crib Harbor or Miller Harbor began in 1876 concurrently with the construction of the railway line connecting it to the plant station. However, the complexity of the old navigating channel and an abundance of littoral shallows made this goal unachievable. A 50-meter-tall dam was built from boulders in the harbor and was used to lay the railway line to the pier. The way to the dam ran across the beach itself. On this line, the engineer F. A. Pirotsky conducted experiments with electricity in 1876. Later, in 1900, small

37 guard rails were installed along the railway line in time to coincide with the opening of the esplanade of the Sestroretsk Resort. Most of the scheduled plans had never been implemented. In 1877, the Beloostrov – Sestroretsk railway still had only four pairs of trains in operation which were mostly servicing cottagers during summer; in winter, it was used only by public officers and merchants. The amount of plant’s shipping turned out to be insignificant. The constructed pier was out of commission. As a result, the Society ended up in financial distress. Most of the scheduled plans had never been implemented. In the mid- 80s, the Sestroretsk Railway Society had finally gone bankrupt, and on January 1, 1886, the railway was closed for traffic. In 1896, the St. Petersburg – Sestroretsk Primorskaya Railway Society was allowed to prolong the aforesaid railway to the Finnish border with branch railway lines heading to the Arms Plant and the Crib Harbor and “to create a resort in Sestroretsk between the sea and the Sestra River”. In order to build the a resort in the mouth of the Sestra on the coast of the Gulf of Finland, the Ministry of State Property allocated 54 desyatinas (around 60 hectares) of state-owned land to the Primorskaya Railway Society for lease until January 1 of 1956 with further subtraction of all property back to the treasury. The lease conditions turned out to be very strict. The executive board was obliged to build a railway line from Sestroretsk to the resort and all the buildings on its territory within two years. The complex was designed and built using the most advanced engineering and medical technologies at the time. A wonderful natural park, a sand beach and dunes with pine-trees became the natural basis of the resort which was opened for commercial purposes and was mostly an out-of- town amusement place for rich customers who preferred to receive treatment abroad. Its profit perspectives were associated with restaurant and entertainment services. But very soon it won the fame of a major balneological health resort. The sanative complex included a health care building with medical rooms equipped with the most advanced tools and the biggest 10-sazhen-long and 5-sazhen-wide in-door winter swimming pool in Russia of the early XX century connected with the building by a passage. The medical building had a laboratory, rooms for preparing artificial mineral baths, therapeutical showers, a mud bath section, physiotherapy rooms, baths, a gym and 32 patient rooms. A unique resort hall was built upon a design project of the architect G. Y. Levi for leisure activities. The 14.3-meter-tall concert hall designed for 1,700 people was located in the center of the building. It was illuminated by three giant electric lamps. The restaurant was located in the right ap wing. The restaurant’s kitchen stove – the biggest one in Russia – allowed 20 chefs and several dozens of their assistants to cook at the same time. Apart from the kitchen, the semi-basement floor included storerooms and refrigerators for storing food and wine. The left ap wing had a library, pool and card rooms, as well as sitting rooms for relaxation. A terrace paved with grey granite (the only

38 thing that has remained to this day) was created in front of the resort hall from the direction of the gulf. A 420-meter-long covered arcade led from the resort hall separating the shoreline esplanade from the natural park. Its gulf-facing side was glassed, while the other side had gaps. Under the arcade, there was a railway which was used to deliver goods from the train station to storerooms and refrigerators. Along the shoreline of the resort lied an esplanade with ornately shaped pathways and lawns. It was believed that the most beautiful sunset could be seen only from the esplanade. Two residential building were constructed for the resort guests: Forest Sanatoria and Sea Sanatoria. Forest Sanatoria (the same building is named Forest Building and San-Remo Holiday Hotel on postcards of the early XX century) was a wooden two-storey building with 65 rooms with steam heating. It was the residency for sanatorium’s patients. Almost all rooms had balconies or terraces. Sea Sanatoria, a two-storey building with 38 rooms on the cost of the Gulf of Finland, was built in 1904. The resort opening terms were met to the accuracy of two days. The guests invited from St. Petersburg to the solemn opening ceremony, which was held on June 20, 1900, were delivered via the new Primorskaya Railway by two special trains. Among them were Minister of Agriculture and State Property A.S Yermolov and Governor of St. Petersburg S. A. Tol. The Chief Commander of the Kronstadt Port, Vice Admiral C. O. Makarov came from Kronstadt by sea. A prayer service was held along with blessings of the resort hall, the medical building and the holiday hotel. Prior to raising a flag over the resort hall, S. O. Makarov made a short speech wishing the new facility a great future. In doing so, he pointed out the great significance of the health resort and P.A. Avenarius’s special merit in its creation. The Sestroretsk Resort had won the trust of wealthy residents of St. Petersburg very quickly. It was visited by legal expert A. F. Koni who had lived in a nearby cottage for many years. Writer Maxim Gorky spent several months in one of the rooms of the medical building. A. G. Dostoevskaya, the wife of the famous writer, came here to save her husband’s manuscripts. Famous ballet-master Mikhail Fokin had rested here; he liked playing lawn tennis on the court of the San-Remo holiday hotel. The guests of Repin’s mansion “Penaty” had also stopped by. Artists of capital city’s theatres especially loved staying at the Sestroretsk Resort. Singer L. V. Sobinov and songstress A. D. Vyaltseva had repeatedly performed here. Orchestral performances became traditional for the resort. The symphonic orchestra of Count A. D. Sheremetyev and brass bands of metropolitan military regiments had played here. In order to increase the audience, the resort administration made a deal with V. I. Suk, the head Kapellmeister of the Moscow Imperial Opera (currently the Bolshoi Theatre, or the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre). V. I. Suk was obliged to lead symphonic seasons at the resort hall with the right to independently pick the musicians for his orchestra. The metropolitan audience rushed to his concerts. Despite the hour and a half trip from the city center and a train ride

39 which was far from very comfortable; listeners were filling the concert hall to its capacity. The best Russian composers of the beginning of the century – N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, C. Cui, A. K. Lyadov and K. L. Davydov – considered it an honor to receive V. I. Suk’s admission for the first performance of their works. The shoreline of the Sestroretsk Resort with a comfortable beach was separated from the adjacent territories to the north of it by a dam projecting into the gulf for over a verst9 which was built already in the middle of the XIX century and used to serve as a pier for steamships of the military ministry delivering goods for the artillery battery deployed nearby. This dam built on cribs filled with stones and covered with lengthwise balks and transversal rail sleepers for railway tracks was the main structure of the so-called Crib Harbor. By the early XX century, it had completely lost its initial purpose. At first, the resort organizers intended to use it for commercial purposes, but they never carried this project into execution. For several years, the old dam served as a place for promenades. There was even a pavilion built at its far end, but the plank deck around it had soon rotten and collapsed here and there. In 1907, the resort administration responded to the Governorate Council’s demands to execute proper repairs by saying that “due to its dilapidation, the pier is closed for the public, and due to the current lack of funds and its uselessness for the resort, is not subject to repairs”. No information has been found in the archives regarding the moment when the dam was finally dismantled or washed out by the waves of the Gulf of Finland. Its base has remained to this day. In the same 1907, the Sestroretsk Resort won the highest award of the World Balneology Exhibition in Spa (Belgium) and was officially acknowledged as one of the best in the world. The creation of the Sestroretsk Resort had predefined the future of the city as not only a popular suburban cottage area but also as a major health and recreation center. In the 1900s-1910s, dozens of charitable orphanages had been built on the adjacent territories. After the revolution, in 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the Commune Union of the Northern Region handed the sanatorium over to orphanages, but under the threat of White Guard’s offensive the property had been evacuated to Detskoe Selo (Children’s Village). The territory of the reserve was occupied by the units of the 19th Rifle Division. In 1918-1920, due to the threat of Finnish intervention, the resort district, which ended up in the front-line zone, was adapted for defensive operations. Several lines of trenches were dug in the park along with equipping wire entanglements. In order to strengthen the positions and expand the engagement zone, a vast number of pine-trees were cut down and dozens of cottages were dismantled.

9 A verst is equal to today’s 1,066.8 meters. The information regarding the fact that the dam of the Crib Harbor was built for the ships of the military department in the middle of XIX was found only in a single archive document dated back to 1907. The construction date and the actual length of this engineering structure require clarification. 40 The Civil War had greatly damaged all the buildings and structures. The territory ended up in an insanitary state, and the equipment was ruined. However, even in the years of devastation the government of the country was paying constant attention to the sanatorium. In 1919, People's Commissar of Health Care N. A. Semashko included the Sestroretsk resort in the list of “sanative areas of state significance of the 1st category”. In April, 1920, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Governorate Council of St. Petersburg decided to evacuate and restore the sanatorium. The first director of the sanatorium to greet a patient after 1917 was talented doctor and organizer P. I. Timofeevsky. At the same time, Professor V. M. Bekhterev became the resort’s research supervisor. The factories and plants of Leningrad helped the sanatorium restore the destroyed infrastructure, and medical institutions helped with technical equipment. As a result, in the autumn of 1921, the resort hosted its first 154 patients: working men and disabled soldiers of the Civil War. At the same time, mud baths with the local curative silt mud were opened here. The sanatorium didn’t work during winter because there was no money for its maintenance. Since the spring of 1922, the Sestroretsk Resort Research and Exhibitory Labour Sanatorium started functioning on a permanent basis. A refectory for the patients, a poolroom, card and smoking rooms were opened in the restaurant of the resort hall. The upper restaurant premises were transformed into residential rooms. And still there was not enough space. The sanatorium was even given possession of the confiscated private cottages outside of the park. In 1923, upon the decree of People's Commissar of Health Care N. A. Semashko, the Sestroretsk Resort was defined as cardiological by its health improvement specialty as the country’s resort system was reorganized. In 1924, the resort’s physiotherapy department was restored, and its laboratory was expanded. Mechanotherapy was extensively being used in during treatment, a dental room and an X-ray room were functioning as well as a bandaging room, a pharmacy and a polyclinic. The sanatorium had serviced 1435 patients within the three months of 1924 alone. During the flood in 1924, the resort’s monument of Peter the Great was damaged beyond repair. In 1925, a hollow was dug in the sand dune, and once a new embankment and a dam were created along the flood plain of the Sestra River, the resort was connected with Beloostrov. This led to the creation of the circular Sestroretsk line of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. In the 1930s, the resort was very popular among Soviet citizens; it was acknowledged one of the leader sanatoriums in the north-western part of the country. According to the plans of the Government of the USSR, the Sestroretsk Resort was supposed to become the largest resort in the world. Its patient capacity was planned to be increased to 4,500 people, but this plan was never brought to life since the resort was located practically on the Soviet-Finnish state border. In 1936, the territories of the Sestroretsk Resort and the Dunes had undergone the construction of reinforced-concrete fortifications of the Karelian Fortified Region. In 1937, the sanatorium was handed over to the military. On November 30, 1939, after the start of the Soviet-Finnish War, the

41 resort buildings were urgently transformed into a frontline evacuation hospital which had functioned until the spring of 1940. The hospital had to be evacuated during the Great Patriotic War due to the proximity of the frontline.

The Sestroretsk Resort. The breakwater. A postcard from the early XX century.

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The Sestroretsk Resort. A view from the balcony of the resort hall. A postcard from the early XX century.

The resort. A view of the resort hall from the sea. A postcard from the early XX century.

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The resort. The Forest Holiday Hotel. (The Forest Building). A postcard from the early XX century.

The Forest Holiday Hotel. (The Forest Building). A photo dated 11.11.2013.

44 During the Great Patriotic War years, all the buildings of the Sestroretsk Resort that ended up on the frontline had been destroyed. But Lengorispolkom (the Municipal Executive Committee of Leningrad) decided to restore the resort zone of Sestroretsk already in the autumn of 1944: the servicemen were ordered to perform double mine clearing of the beach and shallow water, the railway workers were supposed to dismantle the destroyed buildings and restore the train traffic of the circular railway line. In April, 1946, Lengorispolkom made a special decision оn restoring the Sestroretsk Resort Sanatorium. The restoration works were executed by Spetsremstroyupravlenie (the Department of Special Repairs and Construction) which received the funds and materials for these purposes. The Forest Holiday Hotel was the least damaged building during the war years. (It had burnt down in the 1970s). It is where the first after-war group of patients of 150 people was located in 1947. The building had hospital wards, doctors’ rooms, medical treatment rooms and a refectory. The basement part of the building included balnearies and mud baths, a physiotherapy room, a dentist’s office and an X-ray room. Two two-storey buildings constructed in the 30s had been restored and jokingly called by the patients “petushki” (“cockerels” – the men’s building) and “kurochki” (“chickens” – the women’s building). The restoration of the medical building of the Sestroretsk Resort ended in 1952. On August 24, 1954, the medical building was put into full commission after capital repairs.

The medical building. - http://vlotour.ru/data/gl/111. A radiation therapy room was opened in 1958 along with the established balneology department: subaquatic and later pearl and oxygen baths. In 1962, the Sestroretsk Resort Sanatorium was given the status of the base sanatorium of Lenterkursovet (the Leningrad Territorial Resort

45 Council). Buildings No. 1 and No. 2, each of them designed for 317 people, treated their first patients in 1963-1964. A new mud bath facility was built in 1969. The new 10-storey building No. 3 for over 500 patients was constructed in 1978. Also, the building had a dance hall, a conference hall and a library. In 1994, a detoxication center was opened using the most advanced haemocorrection methods for treating kidney, liver and gall bladder diseases, allergies, oncological, chronic heart and other diseases. The only swimming pool with mineral water in St. Petersburg was opened in December of 2001 after capital repairs. The pool is equipped with hydromassage, a cascade shower and geysers. In the evening, special background music is being turned on along with special lighting creating an advantageous atmosphere for recreation.

Building No. 3. - http://itd1.mycdn.me After taking a walk across the beach along the shoreline of the Gulf of Finland, you will get from the Sestroretsk Resort to the old Dubki Park where the history of Sestroretsk had begun.

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A view of Dubki Park from the roof of building No. 3 of the Sestroretsk Resort. A photo dated 11.11.2013. As you make your way to Dubki, you can see several other cottages of the early XX century along Plyazhnaya Street. The appearance of identified cultural heritage object “The suburban house of F. R. Vitsel” (7, Plyazhnaya Street) has remained in authentic documents.

The suburban house of F. R. Vitsel. A photo dated 10.03.2014. The adjacent cottage of F. V. Shapovalenko (9, Plyazhnaya Street) is a modern replica of the original building.

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The cottage of F.V. Shapovalenko. A picture from the early XX century.- http://p2.citywalls.ru/

The cottage of F. V. Shapovalenko. A photo dated 01.03.2014. Two buildings on Parkovaya Street – the cottage of V. G. Likhachev (16, Parkovaya Street) and the cottage of O. V. Kondratyeva (18, Parkovaya Street) were rebuilt in the early XXI century.

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The cottage of V. G. Likhachev. A photo dated 18.03.2012.

The cottage of O. V. Kondratyeva. Near them stands the preserved original cottage of B. N. Kann built in the 1900s (14, Parkovaya Street).

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The cottage of B. N. Kann. A photo dated 18.03.2012. The major works for the construction of a harbor near the mouth of the River Sestra were launched in 1706. Soon, a special team of officers was assembled for the exploration of the nearby territory with a goal to find iron ore and draw a map of the area. Peter I first visited this place on September 20, 1714, after the crushing defeat of the Swedish fleet near Gangut. He ordered to lay the foundation of his future summer residency on the edge of a relict oak grove. The analysis of layouts and maps if the first quarter of the XVIII century conducted by T. B. Dubyago indicated that there were three oak groves on the northern bank of Neva Bay: the so-called Novye Dubki (New Oaks) between Lakhta and Lisiy Nos was the closest to the city; Starye Dubki (Old Oaks) – near Lisiy Nos; and simply Dubki (Oaks) – on the territory of Dubkovskaya Spit. In the archive documents of those times, the mansions built near them were named Blizhnie Dubki” (Nearby Oaks), Srednie Dubki (Middle Oaks) and Dalnie Dubki (Far Oaks) in accordance with their remoteness from the city. The name Bolshie Dubki (Big Oaks) can also be found along with the others. Peter the Great’s visit to Dubkovskie mansions is mentioned in travelling journals of 1719, 1720, 1721, 1723 and 1724. The imperial residency in Dalnie Dubki had been extensively developed from 1719 to 1724. It coincided with the launch of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant construction works and was caused by the necessity of providing the monarch with a residency, as he was personally supervising the progress of this grand construction. One of the reports of the garden master to the Construction Chancery directly stated that “the creation of a vegetable garden in Dalnie Dubki began in 1719”. The soil for park planting was delivered by peasants of “monarchic villages” of Koporsky, Shlisselburgsky and

50 Yamburgsky districts. The same peasants had delivered over 2,000 10-15-year-old oak seedlings from the southern districts of the St. Petersburg Governorate. It is known that Peter the Great had personally planted around 200 seedlings.

The palace in Dalnie Dubki. The frontage facing the sea. A design draft. 1722. Architect De Vaal. OR GE No. 2741. The first wooden palace can be seen on the general layout plan of Dubki dated back to 1722 on the very cost reinforced with an upright retaining wall. Within the same year, Peter the Great ordered to replace it with a stone palace: “The new palace in Dubki needs to be built closer to the water than the designed one so that it is projected into the sea with arcades on both sides”. The implementation of this project required building an artificial embankment projecting into the gulf in the southern part of the cape. The main works were carried out in 1723-1724 under the supervision of architect Steven van Zvitten; the woodwork was held in the arcades in 1725. A harbor for military and merchant ships was built to the south of the palace at the end of the oak grove. The adjacent cost part was reinforced with timber pales and a big embankment with iron grates. A pavilion was constructed on iron frames on the granite reef standing out of the water 200 meters away from the shore. Two lines of trees were planted along the perimeter of a view terrace in front of the palace limited by a retaining wall along with setting up a small regular garden. The main array of the oak grove was split with alleys coming from big round glades to form a star provided that the main alley was set straight from the southern end of the cape of Dubovskaya Spit leading to the plant with its construction in progress and the settlement forming nearby. Outside of the mansion, the alley merged into a country road which would later become Dubkovsky Highway. Since the park territory was located in a lowland zone, an earth protection dam had been built along the shore of the Gulf of Finland in place of a natural coastal bar and reinforced with planted trees. At some points its height reached 3.5 meters, and its width ranged from 8 to 30 meters. However, despite all the precautions, the area with the palace and the garden had been repeatedly flooded with water. Soon after the death of Peter the Great, natural disasters were exacerbated by the human factor. In the spring of 1727, upon the instructions of A. D. Menshikov, the palace lost its doors, floors, panel boards, stoves and window sashes which were ordered to be brought to St. 51 Petersburg for the “construction of a house” on Preobrazhensky Island. Frequent floods were heavily damaging the buildings and engineering structures built on the near-shore lowland. For example, the harbor in Dubki was leveled to the ground with a flood in the autumn of 1745, and the waterfront arcades with iron grates that were used for promenades in front of the palace had been washed away by a “violent tide” in November, 1752. The palace arcades were also heavily damaged on the same occasion and had never been restored since. The pier near the palace was soon restored, and since 1756 Dubkovskaya Pier had been used for maintaining the work of armories along with making “some improvements”. Essentially it led to the creation of a new harbor located on a new spot – on the cape of the Dubkovskaya Spit west of the palace. Upon the governmental decree in 1762, the half-destroyed palace building was “repaired to the possible extent, sealed and served as a warehouse for the plant’s goods unloaded at Dubkovskaya Pier”. The heavily rebuilt palace of Peter the Great was dismantled in the late 1770s. At the same time, high embankments with battery-backed trench parapets were made out of wreathen bushes “close to the mouth of the Sestra River and near Dubkovskaya Grove where there were havens with a sufficient number military frigates.” These embankments were used to deploy artillery guns. In late May of 1855, during the combat operations in the Baltic Sea in the course of the 1853- 1856 Crimean War, a joint English-French fleet was stationed in the Krasnogorsky roadstead. At the same time, a squadron of a reserve Life Guard combat engineer half-battalion arrived in Sestroretsk to build the fortifications of the basic retrenchment required to mount the field artillery batteries. But they had no time to mount the cannons. On June 14 of 1855, the enemy, not daring to attack Kronstadt, shelled Sestroretsk facing no countermeasures. At the time, a part of the residents was inside the plant’s churches and passionately prayed about the patronage of the higher powers. To everyone’s amusement, the plant’s buildings had not been damaged by the shelling, and all of them had survived. Only several oaks in the preserved grove were damaged. Priest of the Church of Peter and Paul P. M. Lyubetsky interpreted it as the protection by saint apostles Peter and Paul and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker and decided to immortalize its memory by building a chapel using his own funds. On April 30, 1857, he filed a motion to manager of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant Major General A. G. Ignatyev asking permission to build a small stone chapel “in the memory of a miraculous deliverance of the plant and the people from enemy fire in June of 1855 < …> on the seashore in Dubovaya Grove at the end of the road leading straight from the plant settlement”. The design project of the chapel signed by 1st class conductor A. M. Murygin was approved by military minister N. O. Sukhomlinov on June 7, 1857. The chapel design project is stored in the archives of the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps. In May of 1858, the direction of the Arms plant was granted permission for building a chapel in Sestroretsk Dubki

52 for the funds of Peter Lyubetsky, the priest of the Church of Peter and Paul. By that year’s autumn, the construction of the stone chapel in the preserved oak grove had been finished. The Chapel of St. Apostles Peter and Paul and St. Nicholas the Wonderworker had successfully made it until the beginning of the First World War. Every year, the priests conducted a special sacred procession in memory of June 14, 1855. In late 1920s, the chapel had remained in ruins, and in the 1930s it was completely destroyed. In 2014, it was rebuilt. In the middle of the XIX century, the territory of Dubkovskaya Grove gained the symbolic memorial status of Reserved Oak Grove. For the next century, it remained the only cultural heritage object on the territory of Sestroretsk to be honored with official acknowledgment. This landscape architecture object was deemed to be a monument of history directly connected with the name of Peter the Great. Its historical and cultural significance as of piece of garden art was not taken into consideration. In the late 1880s, Dubkovskaya Grove had switched from the authority of the Sestroretsk Arms Plant under the authority of the Ministry of State Property. The Dubki Recreation Garden was opened in Sestroretsk on May 22, 1889. This day is considered the founding day of the Sestroretsk Dubki Culture and Recreation Park. In 1893, the Dutch Garden had been cleared of birches and alders (704 trees).

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The Oak Grove of Peter the Great. Postcards from the early XX century. In 1904, I. A. Marinin, a peasant from the village of Belye Kolodezi of the Kolomensky District of the Moscow Governorate, became engaged in organizing amusement activities in Dubki Park. In May of 1904, he filed a motion for being granted permission to open the Dubki family amusement

54 park in Sestroretsk for the upcoming summer season. His companion was T. E. Mikhaylova, a peasant widow from the Zhukovskaya Volost of the Rzhevsky District of the Tver Governorate. They made an agreement upon which she leased him a part of the land she had inherited from her husband E. Mikhaylov with an area of 3,000 square sazhens with outbuildings adapted for gardening, such as a stage building, a buffet building, a musicians’ building, 4 kiosks for trading, a pay-office with two sections, a building with restrooms for men and women and a cellar, for three years at the price of 250 rubles a year. Marinin was obliged to maintain cleanliness and tidiness of the garden and buildings, as well as quietness and order. Mikhaylova had preserved the right to walk freely in the garden from morning to 6 o’clock in the evening with her entire family and from morning to 1 o’clock on Sundays, as well as the right for one free ticket for 4 people to evening festivities in the park and tickets to the theatre for two places on the front bench. Directors and artists of St. Petersburg theatres were invited to the 1904 summer season in Dubki Garden in Sestroretsk. The programme included such drama plays as “The Forest”, “The Government Inspector”, “The Power of the Fiend”, “The Lower Depths”, “The Two Orphans”, “Old Times in Kashira”, “Prince Serebrenni”, “Shylock”, “The Robbers”, “Na Boykom Meste”, “Boris Godunov”, “Behind the Monastery Wall”, “From Stair to Stair”, and “Intrigue and Love”; such vaudevilles and comedies as “Under a Sweet-Scent Lilac Branch”, “The Orderly Has Failed”, “Resident”, “Waiting for a Comet in a District Town”, “Uniform”, “Wife for Rent’, and “Home Table”. On holidays, the park hosted festivities for children from 1 o’clock to 5 o’clock in the evening with games, divertissement, magicians, clowns, jugglers, gymnasts, an accordionist choir etc. In the spring of 1900, chairman of the executive board of the Primorskaya Railway Society appealed to the St. Petersburg governor for permission to install a monument in honor of Peter the Great: “As I am finishing the construction of the Sestroretsk Resort and the improving of the park and the beach, willing to develop the shoreline, I am purchasing a monument of the founder of Sestroretsk, Emperor Peter I, portrayed in his youth during his life in Holland as he was studying the art of ship building. The pedestal to replace the current one will be made of granite with the inscription “Peter I under the name of a woodworker in Zaandam””. The memorial representing a set of monuments installed in Zaandam and St. Petersburg was solemnly opened on the opening day of the Sestroretsk Resort on May 2, 1900. It was damaged beyond repair during a flood in 1924. On the same occasion, a 600-meter-long and over 20-meter-wide terrace over the beach in the Sestroretsk Resort was washed away by a hurricane. Large-scale works for reconstructing and restoring the park had been held in 1948-1950 upon the design project of the architect V. V. Kirkhoglani. Following the decision No. 650 of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council on August 25, 1975, the Dubki Park together with the Dutch Garden, hydraulic engineering structures

55 and the defensive earthworks is included in the list of Sestroretsk monuments. For example, the Reserved Oak Grove, the material value of which had been acknowledged even by the imperial government, became the first cultural heritage object on the territory of Sestroretsk not related to the Great Patriotic War or the revolutionary movement. And yet, a hundred years later, the emphasis in determining its value was put on its features of landscaping and engineering arts, though there was nothing left from neither the Dutch Garden or the hydraulic engineering structures by that time.

The chapel in Dubki. A postcard from the early XX century. In 2011-2012, the park underwent drainage system restoration and reconstruction works. Open road drains were mounted in 2011, and in 2012 they were replaced with subsurface drainage. A conference dedicated to the year of the Netherlands at the Central Library named after M. M. Zoshchenko was held in October 24 of 2013. The park development plans include the construction of anti-flood structures in the form of restoration of the protection embankment and construction of a flood gate. This will allow restoring the Dutch Garden in its original form. Following the contract with LLC PIK, all the ill old-aged oaks had been cut down in 2014 for the purposes of sanitation and treatment of long-boled plants in the park.

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A view of the Sestroretsk Resort from Dubki Park. - http://photopodium.com/

Dubki Park. - http://rasfokus.ru/

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Dubki Park. - http://eco-turizm.net/

Dubki Park. - http://udaff.com/

58 Dubki Culture and Recreation Park is currently the center of cultural and sports life of the city of Sestroretsk. A new equestrian center with a race track was built in the park in 2002 and became the place for annual show jumping and horse-breaking competitions. The center provides great and safe conditions for grooming. A stadium was built in 2007. The two football fields have artificial turf. Among the available services are sports equipment rental, a boat station and a fitness gym. Tennis courts are very popular among tennis-players and serve as an ice-rink during winter. The sports and concert complex became the base platform of the Center of Art Youth Initiatives. For the fans of quiet and family recreation there is “Fairytale Glade”. As of 2009, the park covers the territory of 60.5 hectares. It is the base platform of the Special Olympic Committee. The park constantly hosts competitions and festivals. Two new tennis courts, ball game and gorodki playgrounds and an observation platform on Cape Dubovsky by the Gulf of Finland were built in 2010. The machine gun bunker built in the late 30s of the previous century has been renewed, the old dismantled amusement ride have been replaced with a modern children’s playground, and the passage over the defensive earthworks with bollards and chains has been restored in accordance with old designs along with the improvement of pedestrian passages around the park. 16 million rubles from the district budget and 3 million from the Sestroretsk Municipal Council have been allocated for the restoration works. The park underwent the shoreline reinforcement works. The equipment for the boat station and garden furniture have been purchased. 1500 bushes have been planted; the frontage of the stable has been repaired.

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Dubkovskoe Highway. Postcards from the early XX century.

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Dubkovskoe Highway. A photo dated 2016. - http://www.gradpetra.org/

Dubkovskoe Highway. A photo dated 2016. - http://img7.kvmeter.ru/

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Dubkovskoe Highway. A photo dated 2016. - http://na-more.su/ Dubkovskoe Highway will take you from the park to Sestroretsk railway station. The “vegetable gardens of Sestroretsk residents” that used to be located on both sides of the highway had been gradually demarked in the beginning of the XX century. They were replaced with compact real estate development and soon turned into a new city center designed for servicing vacationists and residents of Sestroretsk. The first certification of Dubki cottages of Sestroretsk Forestry was held in 1902. A. A. Shreyber’s “Moulin Rouge” cinematography building with a skating ring was constructed on Dubkovskoe Highway in 1910 along with the skating ring of A. N. Prokofyeva. Shreyber’s cinematography building had been reconstructed in 1911-1912. In 1913, it was equipped with another cinema hall. The only thing that has remained to this day from the pre-revolution times is the heavily rebuilt railway station.

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Sestroretsk railway station. A postcard from the early XX century.

Sestroretsk railway station. A photo dated 2016. - https://upload.wikimedia.org/

63 This is where our tour ends. The last suburban train to St. Petersburg departs every day at 22:50.

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