The Nizhny Novgorod Curse, the Curse of the Nizhny Novgorod Prostitutes — a set of frightening notions in the urban legend genre which explain the fact that in modern times the city of Nizhny Novgorod has never had a powerful public movement or an authentic cultural life, and that attempts by the townspeople to organise themselves are inevitably and crudely suppressed — not least by those very townspeople.

The theme of the Nizhny Novgorod curse is developed most tellingly in the work of the late musician Alexei "Polkovnik" Khrynov.

The legend comes down to a story of the massacre of the sensuality industry in Nizhny Novgorod and the curse that followed — because a long-standing friendship was betrayed.

The essence of the phenomenon

The central point around which the popular plots of Nizhny Novgorod mythology revolve. "Bitter people from a The City of Gorky", "Wooden houses, iron locks, stone people" — formulas of this kind, reflecting the essence of the Nizhny Novgorod regional civilisation, were left to us as a legacy by the classics of urban folklore.

They all come down to the particular cruelty of Nizhny Novgorod, tolerant of newcomers but driving out its own talents. And the experts and members of the elite who remain are regularly forced into activity that resembles prostitution.

The origin of the curse

"..There is one more version of Nizhny Novgorod's particular cruelty. This version is a mystical one.

It holds that a curse hangs over Nizhny Novgorod, one that is still far from worked off or atoned for.

When the Volga Flotilla was being created in 1918, a problem arose. The sailors would not submit to discipline at all. As it turned out, the whole thing was that near the Nizhny Novgorod Fair there was an enormous number of brothels.

And the sailors liked that more than revolutionary army discipline.

And then, by the direct order of Lenin, all the prostitutes were destroyed. This is a well-known historical fact. Only after that shooting was the Volga Military Flotilla created.

And ever since that time our city has borne a curse that has not been washed away and not been prayed off.

Leonid Bolshukhin, "The Chill of the Public". 8 November 2012, APN-NN

Legends of the pre-revolutionary curses of Nizhny Novgorod

On the high bank of the Volga, at the place where the Oka flows into it, on the Dyatlovy Hills, stands the The Kremlin. Around it is the business part of the city with the most expensive flats, with narrow little streets crammed with the latest models of foreign cars and rubbish bins from the late stagnation era. The streets are built up with houses of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 21st century, in which every door is the entrance to some respectable office. Nearby, behind the facades of the buildings, are decrepit houses under state protection (which from time to time burn down for undetermined reasons or collapse from old age).

In each of these houses some classic writer or revolutionary once lived, and now they are inhabited by pensioners who fight for their place in the sun with those who would like to take the premises over for warehouses. The centre of the social scene is Bolshaya Pokrovka. It is a pedestrian street next to which Moscow's Arbat is a pitiful little dead end. Here live the city's chief bosses, old hippies, second- and third-generation descendants of the previous city government, actors (some already drunk into ruin, some not yet, and some who have already given it up) and other antisocial but very much respected elements of society. In the very middle of the street, among casinos, nightclubs, theatres, cinemas, restaurants and fashionable shops, there stands a fence: a handsome cast-iron grille.

Every day paintings are hung on the fence for sale; in front of it people sell talismans, tell fortunes and draw portraits; and behind the fence, screened off from the main street by an apple orchard, stand several university buildings housing the philology, journalism and law faculties and a good deal else. If you go around the fence on the left and move a little forward, you can find yourself in the very place where, according to legend, the doom of Nizhny Novgorod and all its inhabitants lies hidden until its hour comes.

In the Pochaina ravine surveying students learn their trade, and role-players sometimes hold tournaments. It is a very strange place. It lies in the centre of the city — yet only the part adjoining the Kremlin and the river is built up. The rest stands empty. Possibly because the city authorities are, after all, familiar with this legend and with the circumstances that made me (and, once you have read this opus, probably you as well) believe that it is true...

A river once flowed here. Those living in the Kremlin took water from the springs that gushed beyond the walls (one of them is alive to this day), while the people of the posad drank from the Pochaina. And the first legend, going back to the times when rivers were worshipped on a par with gods, is the tale of how the Pochaina was wronged.

"The Nizhny Novgorod river Pochaina, which ran along the ravine beside the Kremlin hill, was not large, but it was useful to the local people, and not only for its water. If it turned black, it foretold an invasion of enemies, and the city, having prepared in advance, more than once smashed the foe at its walls and beat back his raids. But when calm came [...], the people began to glorify the victories of old, naming the Volga, and the Oka, and the Dnieper, and the Don — only not the Pochaina. She took offence and fell to weeping: "Was it not I who stood on guard!.. Great is the Volga — and glory to her!

But did she ever have such care for Rus, such grief, as I did?". In reply the people of Nizhny only smirked, having evidently forgotten the river's former glory. Then the Pochaina complained to the Volga, asking her to stand up for her daughter. But the offended mother refused her help: "Many an evil word have people spoken of you, and even that is too little... Should I pity you — when all have wronged you?! So why have you come to me with a complaint, you boastful turncoat?!". The embittered Volga raged and carried in mountains of yellow sand to close off the Pochaina's path. She had no way out, and the water from the upper reaches kept rising and rising. Then she overflowed her banks and flooded the riverside hovels of the poor. The people round about prayed, and the damp earth parted, took the little river into itself, and closed again."

I was quoting the collection "Legends and Traditions of the Volga River" by Vladimir Nikolayevich Morokhin, a local historian who spent 50 years on folklore expeditions. Almost all the remaining stories will come from the same source.

And so the Pochaina went underground, and the people of Nizhny (or more precisely, the women of Nizhny) had to go to the Volga for water. Even before that, the daily descent to the Pochaina and the climb up the steep slopes with full buckets called for the strength of a bogatyr. Evidently it was this constant training that made our women so strong that when a Mongol detachment approached the city one morning, the women who had come out for water managed to rout it on their own, using nothing but their yokes. But it was this very strength that became the cause of the curse laid upon the city.

"Saint Makary sailed down the river Oka, sailed down all the way to Nizhny and put in here on the little river Pochaina. He came ashore, but the inhabitants did not receive him. For some reason Makary did not please the Nizhny Novgorod women who were washing their linen here at the time, and they drove him away from Nizhny with abuse and washing beetles. "Then be this city cursed," said Makary, "let this little river at the end of the world become a great river and drown the city!""

And whom did our ancestors wrong this time? Saint Makary is a real historical figure, the founder of the Makaryev Monastery (1435) and of a whole heap of other cloisters. He died on 25 July (7 August by the new style) 1444 in Unzhensk at the age of 95. Both during his life and after his death he was renowned as a healer and miracle worker. The official lives of the saints do not include the fact of the curse on Nizhny Novgorod, but they do contain another episode. When the Tatars besieged and set fire to Unzhensk in 1522, the townspeople prayed to their heavenly protector. "Suddenly rain began to fall, it soon turned into a downpour, and a flood came.

The water flooded the streets and the houses, it seemed the whole city was afloat, and the fire died down. Now the Tatars fell into confusion: one part turned against another, and they began to fight. From the walls the townspeople saw the Tatars attacking their own and understood that the venerable Makary had saved Unzhensk; many saw the elder standing on a cloud and pouring water over the city out of an enormous tub. At once they opened the gates, rushed upon the Tatars and killed most of them. Those taken prisoner said that they had seen a monk standing in the air above the city and shooting at them; then on a great white horse he cut into their army, and they, maddened with fear, began to hack at one another with their swords, thinking that they were fighting the Russians." One more fact testifying that the water element was subject to the elder: in the Makaryev-Unzhensky Trinity Monastery near the town of Makaryev outside Kostroma, the well he dug with his own hands has still not run dry.

One may believe or not believe in the Orthodox God, but the curses of people like Makary usually come true, whatever faith they may profess. We do not yet know when ours will come true. We know only under what circumstances.

"In Nizhny Novgorod, beside the fortress, there is a small brook; it runs along the ravines and near the Church of St Nicholas flows into the Volga. It is called the Pochaina, and they say that Yury Vsevolodovich, the founder of Nizhny Novgorod, gave the brook this name, being struck by the resemblance of the Nizhny Novgorod site to that of Kiev. In the place where the Pochaina takes its source there is a large stone on which something was once written, but by now it has been effaced. The fate of Nizhny Novgorod depends on this stone: in the last days it will move from its place; water will come out from under it and drown the whole of Nizhny."

The Vladimir prince Yuri Vsevolodovich (1188—1238), the second son of Vsevolod the Big Nest, is also a most remarkable figure. The prince never won a single major battle: all his victories came only when he had a considerable superiority in forces, which was used to intimidate; in a fight on equal terms Yuri Vsevolodovich was always beaten. He was no valiant commander, but he was a genius in economics and in diplomacy. The territory of the principality grew greatly during his reign, and many new towns were founded. Yuri Vsevolodovich died while gathering on the Sit River (Yaroslavl Region) the troops that remained after Batu took Ryazan. The forces never managed to unite, yet he left a good memory of himself. Even in the chronicles compiled by the prince's enemies he is spoken of with respect, and his acquaintance with certain secret knowledge is attested by the fourth legend.

"The elders of the Mordva, having learned of the Russian prince's arrival, sent him beef and beer by way of some young men. But along the road the young men ate the beef and drank the beer, and brought the Russian prince earth and water instead. The prince-murza rejoiced at this gift, took it as a sign of the Mordvin tribe's submission and sailed on down the Volga River. Wherever he cast ashore a handful of the earth presented to him by the slow-witted Mordvin youths — there a town would stand; wherever he threw a pinch — there a village would stand..."

Now let us return to our own time and look at a modern map of the region. The map must be detailed enough for the main thing to be visible — the rivers.

The north-east, the low bank of the Volga — the "forests", a flat expanse once covered by taiga (and even now, after all the fires and the invasion of gardeners, patches of the old forest can sometimes be seen even not far from the highway). Where there is no taiga there are swamps (Svetloyar lies in exactly such country). A road left unattended falls apart within a few years. The back of beyond. It was not for nothing that people fled here to hide from every authority, and the pagan tradition could be broken neither by Peter nor by Lenin. Even among the Slavic population mass paganism survived (according to Melnikov-Pechersky) until the beginning of the 19th century, and village healers are still practising (from my own personal experience) to this day.

The south, the high bank of the Volga — the "hills". Hilly country; the forests to the south gradually peter out, giving way to meadows, while the swamps remain. And everywhere there are rivers, streams, brooks, springs. The region is saturated with water, and dry places are few enough. In the west, in the limestone soils, there are caves. Sometimes the ground suddenly sinks, and in the place of the collapse, filling with groundwater, a perfectly round karst lake is formed.

Sometimes whole towns suddenly go under water. The best-known legend is the one about Svetloyar, on whose site Kitezh once stood. The lake lies not far from the present-day Vladimirskoye, and for some 300 years now seekers of mysteries and esotericists have been gathering there on Ivan Kupala. By now there are far too many of them — because of the excess of bathers the crystal-clear water of Svetloyar turns into a murky sludge by the end of the pilgrimage.

A similar legend about a town going under water is attached to Lake Nestiyar as well, and cases of several Chuvash villages sinking have also been described. The collapse nearest to the railway is Lake Krugloye (the Ozero platform on the Kirov line), but no stories are connected with it (at least, none that I know of).

According to geologists, practically the whole territory of the region is one large reservoir. Beneath our feet lies an entire underground sea. Almost the whole south and east of the region draw their water from artesian wells; water taken there from an ordinary standpipe does not spoil, even when poured into an ordinary one-and-a-half-litre bottle. Moreover, deeper wells have been drilled of late and the region exports mineral water obtained from the depths. Lower still lie medicinal muds. All in all, it is not a region but an enormous ark.

People who knew water and knew how to speak with it used to be found in every village. They sought out the place where a well was best dug, they said where a house should be built so that it would not be swept away by a flood, so knowledge about the possibility of the land sinking under water may well have been theirs too. As was the ability to lay a spell on a river.

"Into the Uzola, which flows through the Gorodetsky District, a small river called the Chudka flows in from the right. One year it appears, another summer it dries up completely. They say this comes to it from a curse. On the bank of the river there once lived a priest and his wife. And they had a little son. And the river was big and full of water. And one day this little son went to bathe in that river and drowned. The mother wept and wept and in her grief cursed that river. And then a miracle happened — in the river's upper reaches the springs closed and it began to dry up. [...] But they say that this curse has its term. Several centuries will pass, the springs will open again, the Chudka will be big and will flood everything around."

If all the facts are put together, the curse of Saint Macarius ceases to be a legend. Those who favour a rational approach to everything in the world may skip the following paragraph, but for those who are interested I offer my reflections. This is only a version, an attempt to tie the facts together; in reality everything may have been otherwise.

In 1221 Yuri Vsevolodovich decides to found a fortress in a place that is very advantageous from an economic point of view. The small garrison of the early days and a handful of settlers, thanks to the prince's diplomatic talent, meet a cordial welcome from the local population (Erzya, Moksha, Mari and Chuvash), and the prince, forewarned by them of the instability of the place, performs a certain rite that strengthens the town's foundation (the memory of it survives in the legend of the gift of earth). At the place of power at the head of the Pochayna a stone is set up — the key to the spell, and the prince obliges the townspeople to perform stabilizing rites (to give thanks to the river).

Yuri Vsevolodovich perishes — and at once something goes out of order: Kitezh and the monastery of Lake Nestiyar go under water at the same time. In Nizhny itself the spell holds for two centuries and even, perhaps, performs certain other functions (the legend of the river that warns of danger). At this point Saint Macarius appears, our ancestors offend him and he curses the town. But what made the women suddenly fall upon the old man? Let us recall the behaviour of Christian saints. On discovering an object of worship, their first impulse is to destroy it. And Macarius discovers not merely an idol, but something incomprehensible and truly powerful — the key-stone of the stabilizing spell!

Picture the scene — women are rinsing their laundry, some old man appears... And the region is swarming with brigands, with Horde and Muscovite spies who dream of nothing but destroying the Principality of Nizhny Novgorod (which was a sovereign state from 1341 to 1392, from 1411 to 1414 and in the 1440s)... The old man walks up to the stone and begins, spewing curses, to batter with his staff (a monastic staff of that time was a small iron crowbar of sorts) the townspeople's chief holy thing, without which they will not survive! Had the women doing the laundry been the weaker sex, they would have run shrieking into the town, Macarius would have smashed the stone, laid down a word of his own and all would have passed off well.

But they turned out to be the sort who would stop an elephant at full gallop and tear off its trunk, so they drive the old man away, sparing his life only out of respect for the monastic habit, while he goes on calling down the punishments of heaven upon the heads of the unchristened and the pagans. The women do not let up. Word by word, the offence grows, Macarius makes up his mind — and does something. Help hurries out from the town... too late. Those who understand are horrified — some cross themselves, some call upon Rod and Svarog, and the Pochayna is already overflowing its banks.

Day by day the water rises, flooding the houses of the poor. The townspeople urgently organize a common prayer, the priests of the neighbouring tribes offer sacrifices to their gods — and a miracle occurs. Mother Damp Earth graciously forgives her great-grandchildren, drawing the Pochayna down into the depths, but from that time on the spell loses its stability. The townspeople disguise the stone, effacing the sacred symbols from it, and resolve to keep the secret, passing it down from generation to generation. The truth is revealed only to the man who comes to power in Nizhny; no matter to whom — one of their own, a man of the Horde or a Muscovite...

Perhaps it was not so at all, but the key-stone still lies somewhere in the Pochayna ravine, keeping Nizhny Novgorod from suffering the fate of Kitezh. Should this stone be moved from its place, the secret word will collapse in an instant, the curse of Saint Macarius will come true and the town will sink under the water.

Literature:

  • 1) V.N. Morokhin, "Legends and Traditions of the Volga River", Nizhny Novgorod, "Knigi", 2002.
  • 2) "The Venerable Macarius of Zheltovody and Unzha", http://www.prilutsk.mrezha.ru/zitie/makarii_zeltovod.htm
  • 3) "Yuri Vsevolodovich, Grand Prince of Vladimir, Georgy II Vsevolodovich", an article in the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary (Yandex encyclopedia)
  • 4) V.A. Kuchkin, "The Principality of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod", an article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Yandex encyclopedia)
  • 5) P.P. Melnikov (Andrei Pechersky), "In the Forests", "On the Hills", Gorky, "Volgo-Vyatka Book Publishing House", 1977-79.
  • 6) "Svetloyar-96, decent heroes always take the long way round", Nizhny Novgorod, the newspaper "Molodyozhnaya Strelka" No. 7-1996, pp. 4-5
  • 7) "A History of the Russian Church", published by the Valaam Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, 1991.

The newspaper "Molodyozhnaya Strelka", Commander Hell

Attempts to break it, and the typical victim of the "Nizhny Novgorod curse"

« Nizhny Novgorod. 7 March. NTA-Privolzhye – The Governor) of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Valery Shantsev, has for the first time in history managed to overcome the "Nizhny Novgorod curse" that weighed upon candidates of the ruling establishment.

Political commentator Sergey Anisimov stated this to journalists.

"At the presidential election the Nizhny Novgorod Region broke away from the all-Russian trend for the first time in many years: the percentage gained here by the winner of the presidential election is higher than in Russia as a whole – 63.9% against 63.6% nationwide. These seemingly insignificant fractions of a percent express a general trend of growing support for Putin among the population of the region," the political commentator said.

"Many people are now saying that at the previous presidential election the Nizhny Novgorod Region ranked only 76th among Russian regions in terms of support for the candidate of the party of power, whereas this time we managed to move up to 34th place. But it seems to me that places in the list of regions are not in themselves all that telling, however characteristic they may be. Personally, I am more impressed by the difference in the actual votes cast," S. Anisimov noted.

"In 2012, in the Nizhny Novgorod Region Putin gained more votes than he had at the elections of 2000 (53.8%, or 850 thousand votes) and of 2004 (65.88%, or 1 million votes), and more than Medvedev had at the 2008 election (61.84%, or 1 million 100 thousand votes). The number of Nizhny Novgorod residents voting for Putin has grown over twelve years by 350 thousand (by 41.18%), amounting in 2012 to a winning 63.9%, or 1.2 million votes," the political commentator said.

"As was to be expected, some representatives of the opposition declared that the election had been rigged. There were, of course, violations at the election, and they must be investigated, since most often they were of a technical nature and, as was noted at the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs, concerned all the presidential candidates and could hardly have seriously affected the citizens' expression of will. The only thing that is unclear is why the defeated candidates themselves (such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Sergey Mironov) found the strength to acknowledge defeat publicly, while their representatives on the ground continue to insist on ballot-rigging and violations. Perhaps home-grown politicians are trying in this way to justify their poor result before the bosses in Moscow? Against this background, the communist Nikolay Ryabov stands out especially vividly: over the past four years, amid a general rise in protest sentiment, he contrived to collapse Zyuganov's result from 24% in 2008 to 19% in 2012," S. Anisimov said.

In his opinion, V. Putin's election campaign in the Nizhny Novgorod Region looked paradoxical.

"Sociologists say with one voice that regional authorities are always criticised by the people more than the federal ones, which the population tends to judge emotionally rather than rationally. Yet in the 'Shantsev–Putin' pairing it was the governor who proved to be the leading figure for Nizhny Novgorod residents: his concrete deeds turned out to be visible to many. The pairing worked, possibly because Nizhny Novgorod residents perceive Putin as the guarantor that the large-scale projects previously announced and already being implemented by the governor in the region will be carried through. If the average all-Russian result of the winner of the presidential race speaks of the level of the population's trust in him personally, then the regional rating of the winning candidate often demonstrates the level of people's satisfaction with the work of the regional leadership. Here it must be admitted that Valery Shantsev has for the first time in history managed to overcome the 'Nizhny Novgorod curse' that weighed upon candidates of the ruling establishment, whose result was always below the national average. From this point of view, in the 'Shantsev–Putin' pairing the governor has apparently acted as the locomotive for the first time. Be that as it may, the people of Nizhny Novgorod have made their choice, and doubts about its legitimacy remain only with the losers," the expert believes.
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