Balchug — a flea market, or rag market, of Nizhny Novgorod, where second-hand goods and old wares were traded. It stood at the walls of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, at the mouth of the Pochaina Ravine where it meets Zelensky Descent and Rozhdestvenskaya Street — now the lower end of Zelensky Descent. It operated from the 1880s through the 1930s [1][2].
Origin of the name
The word is of Turkic origin. The historian I. G. Pryzov, writing in 1868, explained the Moscow toponym as follows: "Balchug is a Tatar word meaning swamp, mud"; in Moscow, it was the name given to the low-lying area between the Moskvoretsky and Tsepnoy bridges [3]. The editorial board of the collected works of Maxim Gorky offers the same interpretation — "from the Tatar for 'swamp,' 'mud'" [4] — while local historians give "moist earth, clay, liquid mud, swamp" [2]. The Nizhny Novgorod Museum-Reserve translates the name differently: in Tatar, "Balchug" means "rag-and-bone" [5].
In everyday speech, the market was known as the Pochainsk flea market or the Rag Market, and the Tatar word, according to the common explanation, owed its use to the traders themselves: the majority of them were Nizhny Novgorod Tatars [1][6]. In Nizhny Novgorod, the word became a common noun: Korolenko writes "along the Nizhny Novgorod balchug," Gorky writes "at the balchug," in lowercase; Korolenko's commentators gloss it as "a trading place, a marketplace" [7][8].
Predecessors: the flea market at the Lower Bazaar
Second-hand goods had been traded in the Lower Posad long before the Balchug existed. N. I. Khramtsovsky, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, described stalls on Rozhdestvenskaya Street near the Church of St. Nicholas where merchants "trade in old clothes, sheepskins, fur coats, short fur jackets, hats, felt hats, boots, and shoes," while opposite the Harness Row "a flea market is held on Wednesdays and Fridays in the square" [9].
Sources differ on exactly where the flea market was relocated from when it moved to the ravine. According to some accounts, the rag stalls stood near the Church of John the Baptist [1][10], that is, near the Ivanovo Tower of the Kremlin [2]. The 1896 guidebook by V. Vinogradov states that the market was "relocated from Sofronovskaya Square" — now Markin Square [11][12].
Background
The market was established at the bottom of the ravine through which the Pochaina river once flowed. Near its channel, along the left bank, a small settlement called "Pochaina" existed in the first half of the 19th century; it was completely destroyed by the fire of 1850 [1][10]. After that, the area remained undeveloped for a long time [1][5]. At the very mouth of the Pochaina once stood the Zachatyevsky Convent, founded in the 14th century; the Russian Biographical Dictionary wrote in the early 20th century that the river "is now enclosed in concrete pipes and buried beneath the buildings of the flea market" [13].
Balchug was laid out according to Nizhny Novgorod's 1881 city plan — at the point where the Pochaina Ravine and the street of the same name met the Lower Posad Trading Arcade and Rozhdestvenskaya Street, near the ancient Church of Our Lady of Kazan [14]. This church was built in stone in 1687 by the "guest" A. F. Olisov, a merchant-industrialist [15].
According to Vinogradov, the market was established "in the time of city head V. A. Sobolev," below Lykova Dam; at the same time, a convenient road was laid from the dam to Zelensky Descent, shortening the route from Bolshaya Pokrovka to the Lower Market [11]. The floor of the ravine was leveled and paved with stone, a drainage pipe was laid beneath it, and driving ramps and pedestrian stairways were constructed [2]. The market rows were relocated here in the 1880s [1][5]; Nizhny Novgorodskaya Pravda gives the year 1880 [10]. The section closer to Lykova Dam that was not built over with wooden stalls was known as Pochainskaya Square [2].
Goods and buyers
The market traded primarily in raw materials, worn clothing, second-hand furniture, scrap iron, and other used goods [1][10][16]. The principal traders were Tatar rag-and-bone men who made their rounds of the courtyards buying up used items, then brought their haul to [6] Balchug the next morning. These dealers would scour the streets of Nizhny Novgorod for old overcoats, boots, and battered hats, collecting all manner of penny-worth odds and ends — binoculars without lenses, empty sword scabbards, bullet-holed portraits of Russian military figures, candlesticks thick with a century's mold, and other junk [1].
The regulars at Balchug were paupers with penny goods and penny turnovers [1][14]. According to local historian T. V. Kucherova, the buyers were the inhabitants of the slums and the "Milliónka" — a refuge for the city's destitute near the Ivanovo Tower [6]. The poor came looking for clothing and footwear, while collectors sought curious household objects that had found their way to the rag-and-bone men [17].
Some researchers believe that Balchug is connected to the early years of Alyosha Peshkov — the future [1][14] Maxim Gorky. Gorky himself, already an adult, left a sketch of Balchug from the time of his acquaintance with the writer, which began in the autumn of 1889: he once saw N. E. Karonin-Petropavlovsky there, who, "hunched over, coughing," was selling a leather belt and waistcoat to a rag-and-bone man [8].
"But listen, my good man — what am I supposed to do with seventeen kopecks?"
Balchug in Literature
For Nizhny Novgorod writers of the turn of the century, the balchug was a familiar part of the city's underworld, and its traders found their way into prose [7][8][18][4][19].
| Work | Year | Who and What at the Balchug |
|---|---|---|
| V. G. Korolenko, "Kolechko" | 1896 | A passerby buying other people's old junk for next to nothing, and stalls bearing signs reading "boots and clothes fitted here" [7] |
| M. Gorky, "N. Ye. Karonin-Petropavlovsky" | 1911 | A destitute writer sells a belt and waistcoat to a rag dealer [8] |
| M. Gorky, "Kladbishche" | 1913 | The husband of lacemaker Yezhova — "a trader in old goods at the Balchug" [19] |
| M. Gorky, "Pozhar" | 1915 | Furriers and tailors work "for the ready-made clothing shops at the Balchug"; a female rag trader dies in prison, where she landed for fencing stolen goods [4] |
| M. Gorky, "Vecher u Panashkina" | 1916 | The tuberculosis-stricken Panashkin "trades in old junk at the Balchug — scraps and castoffs" [18] |
Order and Sanitation
The city attempted to bring order to the flea market through construction: by the mid-1890s, according to Korolenko, "tents had been erected here for the sake of order by the enlightened municipality of our century," bearing short signboards [7]. The writer himself saw the market as a health hazard: second-hand clothing passed from hand to hand with no thought given to who had worn it before or from what disease they had died [7].
In the early 1910s, the old, dilapidated wooden stalls were dismantled and replaced by several stone ones [2]. In 1912, some of the shops from the Pochaina were relocated to the new Kanavinsky Market in the Makaryev quarter, though sanitary conditions there also left much to be desired [10].
Perhaps the former owner of this jacket or this cap is already lying in a cold grave, having bequeathed to his unknown successor the seeds of his fatal disease — smallpox, diphtheria, consumption.
The End of the Market
The bazaar remained in operation until the 1930s [2]. As late as 1931, American glaciologist William Osgood Field, traveling through the USSR, photographed crowds of buyers and traders at Balchug [20].
The market's surroundings were changing at the same time. In 1929, when the House of Soviets was being built in the kremlin, the Kazan Church at the foot of Zelensky Descent was earmarked for demolition "in order to improve traffic flow between the upper and lower parts of N. Novgorod"; on 25 March 1935, the city soviet resolved to demolish the church "in connection with the replanning of Zelensky Descent" [15]. In the 1990s, plans were drawn up to run a road along the bottom of the ravine as an alternative route to Zelensky Descent, with a tunnel through the Lykova Damba and an exit onto [2] Malaya Pokrovskaya Street.
Neighbors: the Yermolayev Factory
Above the market, an industrial development took shape — the Novo-Lyskovskiy Brewery of the Yermolaevs, later the Pochaina Joint-Stock Company [1]. Merchant Aleksey Fyodorovich Yermolaev began building it, according to the museum-reserve's records, in 1881 [5]; local historians date the opening of the complex to 1882 [2]. The site was chosen for its proximity to the Yarmarka, which guaranteed a ready market [14]; Yermolaev's beer won a silver medal at the All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 and a grand prix in London in 1903 [14].
The neighboring markets of the Lower Posad
Balchug was but one of the rows of the large Lower Posad Market, which stretched along Rozhdestvenskaya Street and the embankment. The name of the neighboring quarter, Skoba, derived from a block of public stalls built in the shape of the letter "П," resembling a door bracket [6].
| Location | Goods | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Posadsky Market, Rozhdestvenskaya Street side | tea, sugar, groceries | [9] |
| Posadsky Market, Zhivonosnovskaya Street side | "all sorts of odds and ends," scrap iron, balalaikas, common tobacco, books | [9] |
| Shops by Nikolskaya Church | second-hand clothing, sheepskins, sheepskin coats, hats, felt hats, boots, leather goods | [9] |
| Harness Row | iron, felt boots and stockings, ready-made footwear, hats and caps; opposite — a flea market on Wednesdays and Fridays | [9] |
| Upper Zhivonosnovskaya Street (now Kozhevennaya) | scrap iron, tea, sugar, groceries, soap, game | [10] |
| Rows between the embankment and Rozhdestvenskaya | fish, meat, flour, salt, leather goods | [10] |
| Shops by Kazanskaya Church | felt boots, leather boots, hats; nearby — a heavy-cartage cab stand | [6] |
| Sofronovskaya Square | apples, watermelons, vegetables from boats and carts, earthenware, government-issue salt | [12] |
Where Balchug Stands Today
The site of the former market is the lower part of the Pochaina Ravine near Zelensky Descent [1]. From the descent, a narrow lane runs along the ravine — Pochainский Ovrag Street, with low-rise buildings on either side [21]. Where the Kazan Church once stood, there is now the Skoba restaurant [6].
In 2021, the nearby Pochaina Boulevard was opened, offering views of the Kremlin, and a terraced park is under construction in the ravine itself: as of summer 2026 it was reported to be 65% complete, with the space planned for completion by November 2026 [22]. The park is conceived as a leisure zone with tree-lined walkways, viewing platforms, and a pedestrian tunnel beneath Dobrolyubov Street [21][14].
See Also
Sources
- nizhnyfoto.ru — Nizhny Novgorod in photographs — Balchug, the rag market, 1890s, photograph by M. P. Dmitriev with description
- web.archive.org — NN-Stories — I. Moskalchuk, facts about the Pochaina and the factory in its channel, 2015 (web archive copy) — 15 interesting facts about the Pochaina: the river that no longer exists and the factory in its bed (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — I. G. Pryzov, "A History of Taverns in Russia," 1868 — A History of Taverns in Russia in Connection with the History of the Russian People (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — M. Gorky, short story "The Fire," 1915, with an editorial note
- ngiamz.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Museum-Reserve — reference article on the Pochaina Ravine — Pochaina Ravine
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text — T. V. Kucherova, essay on Rozhdestvenskaya Street — Kucherova T. V. Rozhdestvenskaya Street (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — V. G. Korolenko, essay "The Ring" ("Nizhegorodsky Listok," 1896) with commentary
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — M. Gorky, memoir about N. E. Karonin-Petropavlovsky, 1911 — N. E. Karonin-Petropavlovsky (archive)
- kostromka.ru — N. I. Khramtsovsky, "A Brief Historical Sketch and Description of Nizhny Novgorod," chapter on streets — Streets of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — on the old markets of Nizhny Novgorod, 30.07.2020 — Market Day: remembering how Nizhny Novgorod's main market came to be (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — V. Vinogradov, Illustrated Guide to Nizhny Novgorod and the Yarmarka, 1896 — The Upper Part of the City
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — on the history of the city's squares, 08.04.2026 — How Nizhny Novgorod's historic squares have changed (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — Russian Biographical Dictionary, entry "Feodora, Abbess of the Zachatievsky Monastery" (archive)
- strategy.nobl.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Region Development Strategy — on the Pochaina Ravine — The Pochaina Ravine: from a "rag" market to a terraced park (archive)
- sobory.ru — People's Catalogue of Orthodox Architecture — the Kazan Church above Zelensky Descent — Nizhny Novgorod, Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God above Zelensky Descent (old) (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — on the history of the Pochaina Ravine, 02.08.2024 — What stories the Pochaina Ravine holds (archive)
- nn.aif.ru — AiF Nizhny Novgorod — on 19th-century markets, 30.10.2020 — What a market! How peasant markets worked in 19th-century Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — M. Gorky, short story "An Evening at Panashkin's," 1916 (archive)
- ru.wikisource.org — Wikisource — M. Gorky, short story "The Cemetery," 1913 (archive)
- kulturologia.ru — Kulturologia — photographs by William Field from his journey through the USSR, 1931 — Vintage photographs by William Field from his 1931 travels through the USSR (archive)
- ГИПЕРНН — GIPERNN — on construction work in the Pochaina Ravine — A terraced park in Nizhny Novgorod: a look at progress in the Pochaina Ravine (archive)
- V gorode N — archival and contemporary photographs of the Pochaina Ravine, 01.07.2026 — Archival and modern photographs of the Pochaina Ravine shown to Nizhny Novgorod residents (archive)