Kulebaki

Kulebaki is a town in the southwest of Nizhny Novgorod Region, the administrative center of the Kulebaki urban okrug; until 2015 it was the center of Kulebakskiy District ^[1]. It stands in the Murom forests on the old trade and postal road between Muroma and Arzamas, roughly 190 km from Nizhny Novgorod ^[1]. It grew out of a village of bee-tree beekeepers and charcoal burners: in the summer of 1866 the landowner Fyodorov and Borodachyov, a merchant from Vyksa, lit a blast furnace here, and within half a century the village had become the second-largest industrial village in Nizhny Novgorod Governorate by output, after Sormovo ^[3][4]. Kulebaki became a workers' settlement in 1927 and a town on February 1, 1932 ^[1]. It has about 31,000 residents; the main enterprise, Ruspolimet, still grows out of that same mining and metallurgical plant ^[1][4].

Where it is located

The okrug lies in the southwest corner of the Region and borders Vyksa, the Navashino okrug, and Ardatovsky District, not far from the borders with Vladimir Oblast, Ryazan Oblast, and Mordovia ^[1]. Three quarters of its territory is covered by forest — the very Murom forests; in terms of forest cover the okrug is among the five most wooded in the Region, and on the Right Bank it is the forest leader ^[1].

It is about 190 km by road to Nizhny Novgorod and 360 km to Moscow ^[1]. The nearest railway stations are Navashino (25 km) and Mukhtolovo, both on the Moscow–Vladivostok main line ^[1]. Regular bus service connects the town with Navashino (24 km as the crow flies, 33 by road); it is 33 km to Murom, 24 to Vyksa, 82 to Arzamas, and 77 to Sarov ^[4]. The town itself stands at an elevation of 104 m, at 55°26′ north latitude and 42°31′ east longitude ^[4].

The plain here is sandy, cut by shallow ravines with gentle slopes and by the valleys of the left bank of the Tyosha; besides it, the Veletma, Shiloksha, Lomov, and Lemet also flow through the area ^[1]. The Tyosha, a right tributary of the Oka, comes within about four kilometers of the town and is lovely for its wooded banks. The area is richer in groundwater than almost any other in the Region, and the Veletma Pond is one of the largest in Nizhny Novgorod Region ^[1]. Within the town itself, people swim at Ustim Pond: a developed beach, a forest on the opposite shore, boats, and ducks ^[9].

Where the name comes from

There is no reliable explanation for the toponym — there are several versions, and all of them hold up equally well ^[9].

• From the Mordvin "kuli" (beehive) and "baki" (vessels) — a reference to the bee-keeping of the first Mordvin settlers, who gathered the honey of wild bees; this is also supported by an urochishche (a named natural locality) east of the town that has long been called Ulishche ^[5].
• From the kuli and baki of the charcoal-burning and tar-making that developed in the village later: charcoal was loaded into the kuli, and tar was drained into the baki — "kuli-baki". This is how old-timers explained the name ^[5].
• "Kuleba-ki" — "Kuleba's path": "ki" means "road" or "path" in Mordvin, and Kuleba, according to local legends, was the name of the first settler ^[2].
• From a personal name: the surname Kulebakin appears in sources from the 15th century ^[4].
• From the Kulebaka River, on which the settlement arose ^[9].

A Village in the Murom Forests

The settlement arose on Mordvin lands by the Kulebaka River, on the Murom–Arzamas trade and postal road, among Mordvin villages; the district administration dates it to the late 17th century, to 1678 ^[1]. Reference works give 1719 — the first census revision in which the village is recorded — and Kulebaki has been listed as a selo (a larger village) since 1781 ^[4]. A later date also appeared in descriptions of the town — the cadastral book of 1791.

Until the mid-18th century there was no fertile land here, and people lived by bee-keeping, hunting, and woodcrafts ^[1]. When these lands became part of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate in 1714, the village had 58 inhabitants ^[1]. After the land survey and the allotment of its own plot of land in 1786, Kulebaki became a recognized settlement; from 1799 to 1833 the village belonged to the Samarin family — under them it became a selo — and in 1833 the estate was bought by the Moscow landowner Nikolay Gavrilovich Fyodorov ^[1].

The selo grew slowly. According to the census of Ardatovsky Uyezd in 1858, Kulebaki counted 176 izbas and 542 inhabitants ^[5]. The serfs plowed, but the land was a poor provider, and their time went to hunting, wild beekeeping, and woodworking ^[5]. The peasants' attempt in 1854 to win their freedom from the tsar ended in reprisals against them ^[5]. In their petition they wrote that their ancestors had always been free and had received these lands from Ivan IV himself for taking part in the capture of Kazan, but that under Paul I the lands were taken away, given to the Moscow commandant, and corvée labor was imposed ^[19].

The memory of the campaign of 1552 lives on in local legends. According to the chronicles, the tsar's route ran from Muroma toward the "Sakansky Forest," with the first camp on the Veletma. In the late nineteenth century, the researcher N. Milotvorsky recorded a legend in Kulebaki: five or six versts before the selo, a swamp blocked the army's road, and the tsar ordered it "filled in" — ever since, the place has been called Peresypny, and it is linked with Lake Medvezhka ^[19]. The neighboring villages of Lomovka, Teplovo, and Gremyachevo also derive their names from that campaign, although they were founded considerably later ^[19].

The Mining Plant

The abolition of serfdom forced Fyodorov to look for new sources of income. Looking at the neighboring Vyksa plants, he decided, together with the Vyksa merchant Borodachev, to build a plant based on the local ores: in 1866 they began clearing the forest and building a blast furnace, and in the summer of that year the furnace began to smoke ^[3][5]. The calculation did not pan out — within half a year the fire in the furnace went out: the newly minted factory owner did not know how to run a business, specialists were in short supply, and the local ore turned out to contain little iron ^[5]. In 1869 the selo became the center of the volost of the same name in Ardatovsky Uyezd ^[1].

In 1872 the plant was bought by the engineers and entrepreneurs Amand and Gustav Struve, brothers who headed the Society of Kolomna Machine-Building Plants, and who made Kulebaki their main metallurgical base ^[1][3]. Under them the pudding, sheet-rolling, steelmaking, tire-rolling, open-hearth, section-rolling, and shipbuilding shops were built, and the production cycle was closed ^[3]. The brothers took turns managing the plant for 26 years ^[1].

In 1877 the first tire-rolling shop in Russia was launched here, producing tires, axles, and crankshafts for locomotives and railcars ^[1][5]. At the same time, according to reference sources, one of the country's first open-hearth furnaces with a 10-ton charge was installed; by 1897 there were five open-hearth furnaces, and open-hearth steel had displaced puddling ^[4][3]. In 1887 a sheet-rolling mill appeared, producing ship armor alongside ordinary sheet metal; blast furnace No. 2 was fired up in the same year, and by 1890 there were four blast furnaces ^[3]. In 1894 a thirty-verst railway was laid from the plant to the stations of Mordovshchik and Oka-Lipnya, followed by spur lines to the peat bogs and into the forest tracts ^[3].

The quality was recognized. From 1882 the plant had the right to display the State Emblem on its products — the quality mark of the day — and the emblem was proudly displayed on the main gatehouse ^[3]. At the All-Russian Exhibition of 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod, the plant's products received high awards ^[5], and at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, Kulebaki took a gold medal — in the category "Institutions for the Intellectual and Moral Development of Workers" ^[3].

By 1900, in terms of output, the Kulebaki Mining Plant was second in the governorate only to the Sormovo works ^[4][3]. It operated 4 blast furnaces, 9 welding furnaces, 4 open-hearth furnaces, and 5 puddling furnaces, 5 rolling mills, and 8 steam hammers; it had 8,000 people on its payroll — 1,500 in the shops and 6,500 at the mines, in charcoal burning, in the procurement of firewood and peat, and in hauling ^[3]. That same year all the blast furnaces were demolished and a single new one 19 meters high was built: it produced more pig iron than the four old ones combined, yet its capacity of 75 tons a day was never fully used ^[3].

Its products were tires, sheet and section rolled steel, rails, beams, springs, axles, locomotive frames, boiler and firebox plate and ship plate, and steel and cast-iron castings ^[5]. The battleship Gangut, laid down in 1909, received its shipbuilding steel from here, and the section iron went into the trusses of the Palace Bridge in Saint Petersburg, opened in 1916 ^[3]. In 1907, near the village of Lipnya (now part of Navashino), the owners set up a small shipyard — a branch of the Kulebaki plant — where metal vessels and railway bridge trusses were built ^[5].

The surrounding forests paid the price for the growth of steel: they were cleared so quickly that the shops had to switch to peat and fuel oil — peat was extracted nearby, while fuel oil was brought by rail from the Lipnya backwater on the Oka ^[5].

How the Factory Village Lived

In 1896, Kulebaki had 222 peasant houses and 80 small houses for factory workers — against eight thousand people employed at the plant ^[6][5]. People lived in barracks and dugouts, several families to a tiny room ^[5].

The sore spot for Kulebaki's residents is housing… There are several wooden factory barracks with paid and free apartments. Two families usually share a small room. For a kitchen and a room the plant charges five rubles a month.

The Price of Growth

Overcrowding bred unsanitary conditions and constant epidemics ^[6]. The owners did not concern themselves with workplace safety: in 1908 the plant recorded 227 accidents — and that was from a single register, while two or three such registers were opened each year ^[5]. The profit for 1897 exceeded 1.1 million rubles; workers and employees received about 3 percent of that sum, while the managing director received 55,295 rubles for the year — roughly three hundred times as much as a skilled worker ^[5].

At the same time, the plant also built what would now be called the social sphere. By 1901 it had two schools for almost 400 children, a hospital with a maternity ward, a house of popular entertainment, a consumers' society, and a hotel ^[3]. In 1896 it acquired its own chemical and mechanical laboratories; in 1897 a wooden church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, built through the efforts of the plant's workers, craftsmen, and employees, was consecrated; in 1899 the People's House opened; and in 1900 the plant began laying out a park, then called the city garden ^[3][1]. By the end of the century Kulebaki's permanent population had reached five thousand, and in summer it nearly doubled ^[1].

The legacy that this era left to the new authorities is described without embellishment in the book marking the city's fiftieth anniversary: a village with no running water or electricity, 360 houses, three square meters of housing per person, five private shops and one tavern, three schools for 300 children from better-off families, and one hospital with 16 beds and a single doctor ^[5].

The Circle, the Strikes, and 1917

The first political arrests in Kulebaki took place in 1896: P. E. Kurov, a student at the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute, brought a banned pamphlet home for the holidays and gave it to a locksmith, A. V. Krisanov, to read; Krisanov began distributing it at the plant, and both were exiled, along with a student named Nikitin and an employee named Aleksandrovsky ^[5]. That same year Krisanov formed the first Social Democratic circle; the people of Kulebaki acquired a hectograph and printed leaflets ^[5].

In 1905–1907 the selo saw strikes, rallies, and demonstrations, and in June 1906 the workers disarmed and drove off the police ^[5]. By February 1908 the organization had 275 members, and Lenin, in his article "On the Straight Road," cited the local Social Democrats as an example of the viability of local organizations ^[5]. The 1913 May Day gathering was held in the forest — 200 people slipped through police cordons summoned from Ardatov ^[5].

Soviet Power was proclaimed in Kulebaki on October 31, 1917 (Old Style), at a joint session of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies — earlier than in Nizhny Novgorod, Arzamas, and Vyksa ^[5][9]. In May 1918 a bomb was thrown into the Red Guard headquarters: seventeen-year-old Red Guardsman Grigory Butov was killed and several others were wounded; in June an extraordinary commission was set up under the Council ^[5].

The "Teremok" People's House

The town's main building is a two-story wooden terem of unusual design, with a small tower, carvings, and ornate windows, at 4A Vosstaniya Street. Locals call it the "Teremok," and it is, beyond doubt, the most beautiful building in town ^[7][8]. It was built at the mining plant in 1898–1899 as a House for People's Entertainment ^[6][1].

For a long time it was believed that the terem had been moved to Kulebaki from Nizhny Novgorod: supposedly it was a pavilion from the 1896 All-Russian Exhibition, where Nicholas II and his wife had stayed. This version, which goes back to T. P. Vinogradova, spread through publications and even made its way into guidebooks. According to archival documents, the building was never transported, and it was never the log frame of the tsar's pavilion: the design was drawn up in 1897 and approved by A. E. Struve, managing director of the Kolomna Machine-Building Plants joint-stock company, which at that time included the Kulebaki Mining Plant ^[7][8].

"Teremok" quickly became the center of local cultural life: plays, masquerades, concerts, readings, Christmas trees, a library and handicraft rooms, a drama circle made up of plant employees and their wives, and, from the spring of 1912, film screenings ^[3][8]. The street took its name from the revolutionary rallies and meetings of 1905, when insurgent workers and peasants seized the building and turned it into a People's House; six days after the October coup, Soviet power was proclaimed in Kulebaki here ^[7].

For two-thirds of its history, the building housed club institutions ^[8]. By the early 1980s, thirty years after the 1945–1950 reconstruction, the terem had fallen into such disrepair that it served as a vegetable store, where potatoes were kept ^[8]. In 1982 the building was handed over to the metallurgical plant for a museum, and on September 10, 1982, on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the town's status, the museum opened ^[8]. Afterward, "Teremok" stood closed for restoration for almost ten years and welcomed visitors again on May 18, 2016; the Region, the District, and Rusполимет restored it under a three-party agreement ^[3].

Today it houses the Museum of History and Local Studies named after the brothers Amand and Gustav Struve: more than 6,500 holdings, a nature hall that grew out of the collection of stuffed animals of the local historian S. I. Babin, a hall of everyday life with the interior of a peasant izba from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and an exhibition hall on the history of the metallurgical plant ^[7]. Among the exhibits are stuffed penguins donated by the Arctic and Antarctic explorer N. I. Tyabin, and young crocodiles brought as a gift by L. P. Shishkin, a physics teacher from a lyceum in Brazzaville ^[7].

The building has made it onto the coat of arms as well. The historic coat of arms of Kulebaki District, approved in February 1997, is divided in two: at the top is the Nizhny Novgorod deer, and below, on the green field of the forest land, is the Museum of Metallurgists, framed by a tire (a railway wheel tire), signifying that Kulebaki is the birthplace of tire-rolling production in Russia ^[2]. It failed to pass registration at the Heraldic Council under the President of Russia, as it does not meet heraldic rules, but it remains the official symbol of the district ^[2].

The Settlement Becomes a Town

In June 1918 the plant was nationalized, and for the next decade it was part of the Prioksky Mining District, administered from Vyksa ^[1][3]. While the plants of the South and the Urals stood idle, the Kulebaki works smelted steel and rolled tires: the armor plates for the first domestically built tank, the "Russky Renault," were produced here in 1920 ^[3]. In 1921 the first "red director" was V. A. Zinovyev, a worker from the tire-rolling shop ^[5][3]. In 1925 the millionth tire was rolled and blast-furnace production was shut down; in the same year the town received electricity from the Balakhna State District Power Plant ^[3][5].

In 1927 the selo, with 15.1 thousand inhabitants, became a workers' settlement, and on February 1, 1932, by a resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the settlement was transformed into a town ^[1]. In 1928 the enterprise was renamed the Kulebaki Metallurgical Plant, and in December 1934 it was named after S. M. Kirov ^[3]. In 1936 Kulebakskiy District was established and the output of the two-millionth tire was solemnly celebrated: the first million had been rolled over 46 years of operation, while the second took only eleven ^[1][5].

The prewar town was built quickly: first two-story wooden houses for workers, and from the mid-1930s three- and four-story brick ones, along with schools, kindergartens, a polyclinic, a post office, a Palace of Culture, a stadium, and a bread factory ^[1]. According to the town newspaper, on January 1, 1933, Kulebaki had 2,873 buildings, and on January 1, 1937, 3,037, of which 2,861 were privately owned ^[6]. Over twenty Soviet years the population grew from 8 to 33 thousand, and the old wooden schools were no longer enough — during the first five-year plans, stone Schools No. 8, No. 10, and No. 11 were built ^[6]. In the same period a railway bridge over the Veletma, a water tower, a public bathhouse, a Communications House, a factory-training (FZU) school, and a factory kitchen appeared ^[6].

Kulebaki became a town before it stopped looking like a factory settlement.

In the 1930s it was impossible to walk from the plant to Klyapikha via Glebov and Martynov lanes without kirza boots (heavy imitation-leather army boots) — that was how muddy and neglected the settlement was

Steel for the construction projects of the first Five-Year Plans

Kulebaki metal went to the major construction projects of the 1930s: the Gorky Automobile Plant, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station, the White Sea–Baltic Canal, the Moscow Metro, and the Moscow–Volga Canal — section rolled steel, tubbing segments, and lock gates ^[3]. In 1931, plant workers submitted 145 efficiency proposals saving 93,000 rubles; the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry was so impressed that the director, the technical director, the head of the tire-rolling shop, and the foreman of the sheet-rolling shop were rewarded with passenger cars ^[3].

In the last prewar year, the 230-km Gorky–Murom–Kulebaki highway was built: plant employees went out to work on it on weekends, honorary certificates and a challenge red banner were established for those who distinguished themselves, and the final section was completed on November 18, 1940 ^[3].

The War

On July 1, 1941, a decree of the State Defense Committee arrived at the plant: to urgently begin producing 45-millimeter armor plates for the T-34. The enterprise was classified — it was assigned the number 178, and the names of its shops were encoded ^[3].

From here came armor plate, rolled "nose beams," cast turrets and machine-gun embrasures, and tank track rollers — destined for Krasnoye Sormovo, where the T-34s were assembled ^[3]. In the tire-rolling shop, using equipment received through Lend-Lease from the USA, they mastered the rolling of ring gears for the turret traverse assembly of the T-34 and KV ^[3]. In the heat-treatment shop and in an annex to the repair and machine shop, they welded hulls for light tanks and backrests for pilots' seats ^[3]. Some of the technologies developed here were adopted by the People's Commissariat as standard ^[5][3].

Those who went off to the front were replaced by teenagers: boys and girls of 14 to 16 worked twelve-hour shifts at machines designed for grown men ^[3]. In August 1943 the plant had ten front-line brigades; in 1944 it had fifty-five ^[3]. The first to fulfill a shift quota at 1,000 percent was Ivan Astrov, a milling machine operator in the repair and mechanical shop, and he soon had dozens of followers ^[3][5].

It's funny to remember now, but to reach the workbench I had to stand on boxes

How the War Ended for the Town

In 1943 a second major enterprise appeared in Kulebaki — the Metal Structures Plant: the country needed structural steel to rebuild blown-up railway bridges and destroyed factory shops ^[1]. In its first decade it supplied metal to 150 of the largest enterprises — from the Gorky and Moscow automobile plants to the Lipetsk Tractor Plant — and its structures were used to build about ten kilometers of railway bridges ^[5]. Later the plant made towers for the Kuybyshev–Moscow and Volgograd–Moscow power transmission lines, as well as tower cranes, including those for the construction of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw ^[5].

More than seventeen thousand people from Kulebaki went to the front, and nine thousand did not return; over eleven thousand were decorated with awards ^[5][1]. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to I. F. Pigin, I. I. Petrov, I. S. Yezhkov, A. T. Muravyov, S. F. Kozyrev, B. A. Kornilov, and A. V. Shcherbakov ^[5]; in all, eight Heroes are associated with the district — M. S. Piskunov is added to those listed ^[10]. Military commanders also came from among Kulebaki's Communists: Army General S. S. Maryakhin, Colonel General P. I. Yefimov, and Major General I. V. Mamontov ^[5].

The Postwar Decades

Kulebaki metallurgists were the first in the country to master cast anchor chains for the naval fleet: they were cast in 25-meter links and joined together at the customer's site to the required length. In 1950, the plant's chief metallurgist I. A. Frumkin and the head of the steel foundry shop A. I. Fomichyov were awarded the State Prize for the technology and in-line production of solid-cast chains ^[3].

From 1951 the plant made spare parts for tractors — bearing liners, gears, connecting rods, track sections, crankshafts — and from 1964 also bean harvesters: the first ones were tested in the fields of the Kulebaksky state farm, and later they were exported to 27 countries ^[3]. In 1958 the bar-rolling shop was completely rebuilt, and by 1963 both mills had been mechanized, which raised productivity by a third ^[3].

In 1965, after the abolition of the regional economic councils (sovnarkhozes), the plant had to choose an industry. A. Ya. Rabinovich played the decisive role: in 1966 the enterprise was transferred to the Ministry of Aviation Industry, and it committed itself to supplying ring products to engine-building plants, including aircraft and rocket engine facilities that were only then being built ^[3]. In the same year, 1966, on its centennial, the plant was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor ^[3][5]. By the end of the 1970s it was turning out titanium and titanium-alloy products in series, and in 1979 it launched ferrotitanium production ^[3].

The town's economy, however, was not limited to metallurgy. In June 1961 a radio-unit plant was established as a branch of the Lenin Gorky Television Plant — an independent enterprise since 1973. It made "Melodiya" radiograms, boards and units for the "Chaika" television set, and chroma and scanning units; its consumer goods shop produced a well-known souvenir — a model television that played sound and lit up ^[5]. Around the same time a garment factory opened, sewing first underwear and raincoats, and then work suits for steelworkers, loggers, and geologists ^[5].

The town grew northward: within ten to fifteen years a microdistrict of five-story apartment blocks rose there, where by the early 1980s a quarter of the town's population lived, while private builders added more than 3,500 square meters every year ^[5]. By that time the town and district had 21 schools with almost ten thousand pupils, a metallurgical technical college, a vocational school, 38 libraries with a collection of about 600,000 books, 14 houses of culture and clubs, the Rossiya movie theater, an art school and two music schools, a sports complex with four halls, a park, and a stadium ^[5].

In the mid-1980s, together with the German firm Banning, a ring-rolling shop was built at the plant — at the time the most modern in world practice; the first rings were rolled in it at the end of October 1986, and this finally secured Kulebaki's leadership in rings for aerospace use ^[3].

Ruspolymet and the Town Today

The collapse of the Soviet Union hit the district hard: many enterprises shut down ^[2]. By 1997, the anniversary year for the tire-rolling shop, output had fallen 90 percent against 1991, the workforce had shrunk by 40 percent, and the shops stood idle; it took the plant eight years to recover ^[3].

In the fall of 2005, the merger of the Kulebaki Metallurgical Plant and the Kulebaki Ring-Rolling Plant created Ruspolimet, the lead supplier of semi-finished metal products for aerospace use ^[3]. A restructuring of production followed: in 2010 a radial-axial mill from the German firm SMS Meer was commissioned, rolling rings up to 6,000 mm in diameter and up to 12 tons in weight; on November 30, 2011, a new steelmaking complex went into operation, and on December 22 of the same year the last heat was run in the open-hearth furnace and open-hearth production was closed; in 2012 a forging and pressing shop was opened, and in 2016 a forging press with a force of 35 MN ^[3]. The town celebrated the plant's 150th anniversary on August 25 and 26, 2016 ^[3].

The second enterprise is the former metal structures plant, now JSC "SMK Kulebaki": its structures were used, among other projects, for the ice palace at the Strelka in Nizhny Novgorod. In 2026, a 2.6-billion-ruble modernization project that will create 268 jobs received the status of a priority investment project of Nizhny Novgorod Region: the plant is taking on heavy metal structures and bridge building, and annual output is to rise by 11,000 tons ^[18]. Also operating are a garment factory, a bakery, and a dairy plant, and forty kilometers away, in Gremyachevo, a mining and processing plant working local dolomite ^[4][1].

The town is fully gasified, and in 2008 a large sports and fitness complex was built ^[1]. The main town holiday is Metallurgist's Day, which in Kulebaki is combined with Town Day ^[9].

Population

The town's industrial history is best seen in its population figures. In 1858 the village had 542 residents ^[5]; the 1897 census counted 4,856 residents in the selo of Kulebaki and another 1,985 in the selo of Kulebakinsky Mining Plant ^[4]. By the end of the 19th century the permanent population had reached five thousand, almost doubling in summer ^[1].

The peak came at the end of the 1970s: in 1979 the town was home to 48,100 people ^[4]. Since then Kulebaki has lost more than a third of its residents. As of January 1, 2022, the town had 31,077 people and the whole District 46,182, with 27 settlements in the District: the town, the urban-type settlement of Gremyachevo, and 25 rural ones ^[1].

Churches, Lost and New

The oldest church in Kulebaki was the Church of the Resurrection, built between 1814 and 1818 under the patronage of A. V. Valueva and rebuilt in 1901–1903. It was lost in 1937; on the site of the church, at 95 Stepan Razin Street, there is now the maternity hospital of the central district hospital, and a memorial plaque hangs on the building ^[13].

The second church, a wooden one dedicated to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, was consecrated in 1897 at the mining plant, in commemoration of the coronation of Nicholas II; the icons for the iconostasis were painted by the Diveyevo sisters ^[1][15]. It stood on Struve Street (now 17 Truda Street) and was also lost in 1937; a kindergarten later appeared on its site ^[14].

From 1927 the rector of this church was Archpriest Mikhail Gusev (1890–1937), the son of a priest of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery. When the monastery in Diveyevo was closed, Father Mikhail was arrested right before the all-night vigil, released two weeks later, and soon received the parish in Kulebaki ^[15].

He will serve where the big chimneys are

The Fate of Father Mikhail

In Kulebaki, Father Mikhail helped the sisters of the ruined Diveyevo convent and the children of arrested priests, and when Father Gleb Chubinsky, who served alongside him, was arrested, he handed over to the man's family the salary due to him ^[15]. On the eve of his own arrest he was twice summoned to the NKVD and urged to renounce his priesthood; he refused. He was arrested on August 31, 1937, sentenced by the NKVD troika of Gorky Region on November 11, and shot on November 20, 1937; in 2001 he was numbered among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia ^[15].

The new church dedicated to Saint Nicholas on Buntarskaya Street took more than sixteen years to build in the town, funded by enterprises, entrepreneurs, and residents ^[1]. And in the Zarechnaya part of Kulebaki, a church dedicated to the Hieromartyr Mikhail (Gusev) has been built, named in honor of a native son of the town ^[1].

What to See

• "Teremok" — a People's House from 1899, 4A Vosstaniya Street; today the Struve Brothers Museum of History and Local Lore, with exhibits on the history of the town and the metallurgical plant ^[7][9].
• Lenin Monument in front of the entrance to "Teremok": a bust cast from a death mask, mounted on a tire — the very product for the sake of which Russia's first tire-rolling shop was opened in 1877 ^[9].
• The equestrian monument to Nicholas II beside the Church of the Hieromartyr Mikhail (Gusev) at 16B Admiral Makarov Street — the only one in the country. Unveiled on July 17, 2021; the sculptor is Irina Makarova, and the initiator was the church's rector, Archpriest Nikolay Boldyrev; more than five million rubles were raised for the monument in donations from Murmansk to Kamchatka ^[16][9].
• The Dubrovsky Palace of Culture (1933) — an example of Soviet post-constructivism; named in honor of a local married couple of directors ^[9].
• The town outpatient clinic building of 1928: its large arched window and pilasters make it look more like a theater than a clinic ^[9].
• The Town Park dates back to 1927 (the plant had begun laying out a plant garden as early as 1900). The summer theater was dismantled, but the fairy-tale turrets and the islet in the middle of the pond, reached by a metal footbridge, have survived ^[9][3].
• The wooden embankment in the park — the "Small Town Embankment" project by the bureau of Stanislav Gorshunov (Stanislav Gorshunov, Maria Yudina, Tatyana Oksyutovich), winner of the ARCHIWOOD 2019 award in the "Urban Environment Design" category ^[17][9].
• Ustimsky Pond, with a landscaped beach and a forest on the opposite shore ^[9].
• The memorial on Victory Square and the Fraternal Military Cemetery on Serov Street ^[10][9].

Natives

Amand and Gustav Struve were engineers and entrepreneurs who bought the plant in 1872 and within a quarter century turned the village into an industrial center of the southern part of the governorate; the city museum bears their name ^[6][7].

Boris Aleksandrovich Kornilov (1915–1940) was born in the settlement of Kulebaki into the family of an office worker, and graduated from the metallurgical technical school in Vyksa and the Kharkov Military Aviation School for Navigators. A senior pilot-observer, he flew 28 combat missions; on March 1, 1940, his plane was shot down over enemy territory near Viipuri, and the crew fought on and perished. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on March 21, 1940 ^[11].

Aleksey Vasilyevich Shcherbakov (1924–1946) was a native of Kulebaki who lived on Truda Street and attended School No. 7. He took part in the Battle of Kursk, the fighting to liberate Poland, and the storming of Berlin; he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on October 16, 1943, and was killed in action in March 1946. In 1979 a reader of the city newspaper proposed renaming Truda Street after him, but it kept its name, and Shcherbakov's memory is commemorated in neighboring Vyksa, where he had moved before the war ^[10].

Ivan Stepanovich Yezhkov (1923–1944) was born in Bolshoye Cherevatovo, moved with his parents to Kulebaki in the 1930s, graduated from the factory training school here, and worked as an electrician at the Kirov Plant. He was killed in June 1944 in Belorussia, and was posthumously awarded the title of Hero on March 24, 1945. In 1954 a street was named after him — the former Sofya Perovskaya Street ^[10].

Ivan Fyodorovich Pigin (1902–1974) was born in Savasleyka, commanded a company, and in the fall of 1944 was among the first to cross the Danube and held a bridgehead near the village of Batina; he received the title of Hero on March 24, 1945. After the war he worked at the Kulebaki metallurgical plant; he is buried in the Brotherly Military Cemetery on Serov Street ^[10].

Igor Anatolyevich Morev (1966–1995) was born in Kulebaki, graduated from School No. 6 here, worked as an assembly fitter at the radio plant, and then graduated from the Tbilisi Higher Artillery Command School. A mortar battery commander, he died of wounds on January 3, 1995, in Chechnya. He was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Russian Federation on May 15, 1995; he is buried in his hometown, and School No. 6, a street, and a public garden bear his name ^[12].

Among the honorary citizens of the district are Viktor Vladimirovich Klochay (2022), chairman of the board of directors of Ruspolymet, and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Uzyakova (2023); in 2025 as many as seven natives of Kulebaki received the title ^[20].

On the Old Highway

The Murom–Arzamas highway, on which Kulebaki stands, was traveled several times by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin — his letters to his wife attest to this; the road led toward Arzamas and onward to Bolshoye Boldino ^[9]. In the 19th century, the neighboring Veletma ironworks invented and produced a particularly high-quality steel that until then only the English had known how to cast, jealously guarding their secret ^[9].

For other towns of the Region, see Towns of Nizhny Novgorod Region; for the surrounding area, villages, and settlements, see Kulebaksky District.

Sources

1. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — official website — About the Okrug: borders, area, population, historical background (archive)
2. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — official website (archive)
3. ruspolymet.ru — JSC Ruspolymet — website of the plant that grew out of the Kulebaki Mining Works — History of the enterprise. From a mining works to specialty metallurgy (archive)
4. mojgorod.ru — "My City" — a people's encyclopedia of the cities and regions of Russia — Kulebaki, Nizhny Novgorod Region: overview, history, population trends (archive)
5. info.wikireading.ru — I. I. Frolov, "Kulebaki: For the City's 50th Anniversary" — a 1982 book — The city's past and present
6. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — local history project "#Kulebaki Map of Unknown Places" — How Kulebaki was built (archive)
7. ruspolymet.ru — JSC Ruspolymet — plant museum page — Museum of History and Local Lore named after the brothers Amand and Gustav Struve (archive)
8. kulebaki.ru — city local history section — Kulebaki Museum of History and Local Lore (article by O. Yezhova) (archive)
9. nn-tourist.ru — Tourist portal of Nizhny Novgorod Region — Kulebaki: what to see in the city and the okrug (archive)
10. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — local history project "#Kulebaki Map of Unknown Places" — Where is this street: streets named after Heroes of the Soviet Union
11. warheroes.ru — "Heroes of the Country" — biographical project — Kornilov Boris Aleksandrovich, Hero of the Soviet Union (archive)
12. warheroes.ru — "Heroes of the Country" — biographical project — Morev Igor Anatolyevich, Hero of the Russian Federation (archive)
13. sobory.ru — "Temples of Russia" — catalog of church architecture — Kulebaki. Church of the Life-Giving Resurrection (archive)
14. sobory.ru — "Temples of Russia" — catalog of church architecture — Kulebaki. Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (old) (archive)
15. kulblag.cerkov.ru — Kulebaki Deanery of the Vyksa Diocese — Church in honor of Hieromartyr Mikhail (Gusev): life of the hieromartyr (archive)
16. Vremya N — The first equestrian monument to Nicholas II in Russia unveiled in Kulebaki (archive)
17. interior.ru — Interior + Design magazine — Archiwood 2019 and the new wooden architecture in Russia (archive)
18. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — Metal structures plant in Kulebaki to be modernized for 2.6 billion rubles (archive)
19. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — press center — In the "Historical Parlor": Ivan the Terrible's campaign and Kulebaki
20. kulebaki.nobl.ru — Administration of the Kulebaki Urban Okrug — official website — Honorary Citizens of the Urban Okrug (archive)