Pochaina — a small river at the walls of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, a right tributary of the Volga and the main drinking-water source of the early city. Since 1839 it has flowed through an underground culvert; on the surface all that remains of it are Pochainskaya Street and the Pochaina Ravine.[1][2]
A Name from Kyiv
The river was named by the city's founder, Yuri Vsevolodovich: the Nizhny Novgorod stream reminded him of the Kyivan Pochaina, which likewise ran down between hills to the Dnieper.[2]
The ravine through whose floor it flowed cuts deep into the upper town: it is fifty to a hundred metres wide and fourteen to twenty metres deep. This boundary became the city's first frontier on the Dyatlov Hills.[2]
While the river ran in the open, it supplied the city with water: the Pochaina was the main water source within the city limits of early Nizhny Novgorod. Along its banks a market grew up as well — the lower posad (riverside trading quarter) with its landing stages at the water's edge.[1][3]
Life of the Ravine
A whole layer of urban life grew up above the Pochaina. In the fourteenth century, the Church of the Sign and the Church of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women stood here — the site of the baptism of Yevfimiy of Suzdal and Makariy of Zhyoltovodye; in 1649 a stone "ship-type" church was built on this spot.[2]
Nearby, the merchant Chatygин's chambers have survived — the oldest residential building in Nizhny Novgorod, known as Peter's Little House: the emperor stayed there in 1695 and 1722.[2]
Until the 1930s, Balchug — a secondhand market run by Tatar traders — bustled beneath the Kremlin wall; the word itself means "rag" in Tatar. In the 1880s the ravine was built over, and in 1882 the merchant Alexey Fyodorovich Yermolayev opened the Novo-Lyskovsky Brewery here — today its buildings house the Pochaina creative cluster.[1][2]
The ravine has its darker memories too: on the night of November 6–7, 1918, Bishop Lavrentiy, Archpriest Aleksey Porfyryev, and the marshal of the nobility Aleksey Neydgardt were shot here.[2]
Zelensky Descent, completed in 1839 on the orders of Nicholas I, runs down to the Volga along the bottom of the former Kremlin moat, through the Pochaina Ravine. It takes its name from the "Green Court" — a gunpowder store and water mill in the ravine: "zelyе" in the old language meant gunpowder.[4]
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1649 | a stone "ship-type" church built on the site of the Church of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women |
| 1695 and 1722 | Peter I stays at the Chatygin chambers |
| 1839 | Zelensky Descent completed; the river is placed in an underground culvert |
| 1882 | Novo-Lyskovskiy Brewery of A. F. Yermolayev |
| 1930s | the Balchug market closes |
| 2021 | proposal made to bring the river back to the surface |
| 2023 | beginning of landscaping works to convert the ravine into a terraced park |
Underground
By the early nineteenth century the river had grown shallow. In 1839 it was enclosed in an underground culvert and covered over with earth; wooden conduits ran beneath what is now Pochainskaya Street.[1][2]
The street above the buried riverbed retained the river's name and the slope of its valley: the houses here were built at different levels, cascading downward in tiers.[3]
Since then, the Pochaina has flowed through a stone pipe along the Kremlin embankment, recalled only by names — of a street and a ravine.[1]
Today the pipe carries stormwater runoff, and restoring the Pochaina's appearance as a river is a separate engineering challenge: the collector in the ravine must be relaid in sections.[5]
The Stone at the Source
An old urban legend is associated with the river: the place where it rises is covered by a large stone, and should it be moved, the water would burst forth and flood the city. In the 19th century, local historians recorded it as follows: when the end comes for Nizhny Novgorod, a mighty torrent will gush from beneath the stone lying at the source of the Pochaina, the river will overflow and flood the city and everything around it.[2]
The second tale concerns an underground passage that led from the Kremlin's Taynitskaya Tower down to the Pochaina; the passage has long since been filled in.[2]
The legend has outlived the open river itself: no one has seen the stone at the source since the riverbed was buried, yet the story about it is retold to this day.[2]
An Attempt to Restore the River
On 9 November 2021, at a round-table discussion, the regional Ministry of Urban Development proposed uncovering the Pochaina's channel and creating a terraced park in place of the ravine; the project's estimated cost was 1.6 billion rubles.[6]
Since 2023, landscaping work has been under way in the ravine: a terraced park with bicycle paths, the planting of 1,300 tree saplings, and 11,000 shrubs.[2]
The experience of creating water bodies is not an abstraction — it is possible to bring the river back to the surface… What matters is slope reinforcement, and various technologies can be considered[6]
See also
Sources
- ngiamz.ru — Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve — Pochaina Ravine
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — 9 interesting facts about Pochaina Ravine (archive)
- pro-nn.org — Nizhny Novgorod. Pochainskaya Street — historical photograph (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — Legends and reality: how the ancient descents of Nizhny Novgorod came to be, May 25, 2022 (archive)
- nn.aif.ru — Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod — More than 100 m of collector pipe relaid in Pochaina Ravine in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
- GIPERNN — GiperNN — A proposal to bring the Pochaina River to the surface in Nizhny Novgorod, November 10, 2021 (archive)