Nizhny Novgorod Encyclopedia assembles the city from verifiable traces: newspaper pages, archival records, old photographs, publications, and family recollections. Every claim here has a source, one click away. The first articles were written on August 26, 2009, when the encyclopedia was a city wiki; today it contains more than four and a half thousand articles, and everything readers wrote back then remains in place.

Why this exists

A great deal is written about a large city every day, but what is written rarely lasts. A publication closes — its archive disappears with it. A link posted three years ago leads nowhere. Local newspaper collections sit undigitized, accessible only in a reading room. Ten years after an event, what remains is a line in someone else's retelling, with no way to verify it.

That is why we collect traces while they are still alive and keep them together. The cable car has its own chronology here: the accident, the closure, the repair deadlines, the postponements, the reopening. In the news this is five dispatches, each forgotten in isolation; in the article it is the object's history, showing what happened and how it ended. Publications we cite are saved to a web archive: the outlet may vanish, but the copy will remain.

Where the articles come from

Articles here are of two kinds. More than two thousand came from the city wiki: they were written by readers, and each such article carries the names of those who started it. We have not removed those bylines — this work was done before us.

The rest have been written from scratch: drawing on publications from Nizhny Novgorod outlets, local-history websites, digitized newspapers, archival inventories, and reference books. At the end of each article is a list of sources; footnotes in the text lead to them.

What counts as a fact

A fact is a claim that has a source — one that can be opened and read. Without a source, a claim does not make it into the article.

When sources disagree, both versions remain in the article: choosing for the reader, when there are two versions, is unfair. When a piece of city lore is not corroborated by anything, we do not strike it out — we say plainly: known only from tradition, no documentary evidence exists. Such stories are as much a part of the city as any document.

Military and politically sensitive subjects are presented on the basis of documents and publications, without editorial judgments.

Scope

The subject of the encyclopedia is Nizhny Novgorod and the Region: people, places, events, enterprises, streets, villages, defunct websites, and the city's collective memory. If a subject spans two cities — a federal factory with production facilities in Nizhny Novgorod, a writer who lived here for several years — we describe the Nizhny Novgorod part and do not attempt the rest.

In large encyclopedias, local detail is often cut as insignificant. Here it is the opposite: the smaller the trace, the less likely that anyone else will preserve it.

How you can help

The most useful thing is to bring a link. If you come across material about a Nizhny Novgorod person, place, or event — open the article and click "submit a link to a publication." The editorial team will work through the material, add facts with citations, and save a copy of the publication; you will be credited as the person who brought the source.

If an article on the subject does not yet exist, you can propose one: the topic will join the queue and wait until enough sources have accumulated.

If you spot an error, let us know. Inaccuracies in information about you or your relatives are corrected first.

What else is on the site

  • City Chronicle — what has happened in Nizhny Novgorod over the past month;
  • In Focus — places and subjects currently generating the most news;
  • What People Are Discussing — topics being talked about in local Telegram channels and forums;
  • Official — announcements from government agencies, services, and municipal bodies;
  • Press Releases — the same from companies, universities, and museums;
  • People in the News — who has been written about in Nizhny Novgorod publications this month;
  • Collections — sixteen curated sets: hydrofoil vessels, Old Believers of the region, the 1891 famine, photographs by Karelin and Dmitriev, an archaeology of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet;
  • Map — articles arranged by location;
  • Most Popular — the most frequently read content;
  • English version — the English-language side of the encyclopedia.

Rights and Funding

The encyclopedia is non-commercial: it was created to preserve the city's heritage, not to generate income. There are no advertisements on its pages, access is free, and we charge nothing for reading, for articles, or for being mentioned in them.

The texts, translations, chronicles, and curated selections are our work: all rights reserved; quotation is permitted with a link to the original. A photograph published under a third-party license carries that license with it; a photograph in the public domain is credited with the author's name and year.

Editorial Team and Contact

The encyclopedia is maintained by an editorial team that writes articles from sources, reviews material submitted by readers, and is responsible for corrections.

Editorial email: . The address is revealed on click so that it does not end up in spam mailings.

Write to the editorial team if:

  • there is an error in the article concerning you or someone close to you — please name the article and describe what is incorrect;
  • you are the rights holder of a text or photograph and wish to discuss its use;
  • you represent a publication, museum, library, archive, or local history society and would like to propose collaboration;
  • you have documents, photographs, or personal recollections that are not publicly available.

The quickest way to add to an article or correct a fact is on the article's own page: the "submit a link to a source" button sends the editorial team your source along with your comment, and once verified, the fact will appear in the article with a footnote.

Links