Tsunami on the Volga — a large wave that forms on a river or reservoir following a bank landslide into the water. The most notable event of this kind occurred on 18 June 1597 near Nizhny Novgorod, when the bank collapsed into the Volga together with the Voznesenskiy Pecherskiy Muzhskoy Monastery [1]. Waves of landslide origin are studied at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences [2].
How a wave forms on a river
About 85 percent of tsunamis worldwide are generated by earthquakes. The remaining 15 percent are caused by landslides, underwater volcanic eruptions, and meteorite impacts; in the twentieth century, human activity was added to this list [2].
For a river, the decisive factor is precisely a landslide: a mass of soil sliding into the water displaces it and raises a wave. The world record for wave run-up was set by such a collapse in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 — the wave itself was about 21 metres high, but on the opposite wall of the bay the water rose 524 metres. The first artificial tsunami occurred in 1917 in the port of Halifax, where two ships carrying explosives collided: the waves reached 10 metres [2].
Tsunamis can occur not only in seas and oceans. On the Volga, too, they have happened, and more than once. A tsunami can be triggered by anything, from a landslide to an earthquake. [2]
18 June 1597
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Pechersky monastery stood below the city at the water's edge and was among the wealthiest in the country: within the monastery alone, six stone churches had been built, whereas the whole of Nizhny Novgorod had only three [1].
Warning signs appeared a week before the disaster. The wooden walkways inside the monastery buckled and rose, and a crack nearly a verst long crept across the hillside above, growing wider. The archimandrite Trifon, who governed the monastery, led the monks out and ordered them to carry away the icons, vestments, and vessels — everything that could be saved [1].
On 18 June 1597, the hill gave way and buried the structures entirely; no lives were lost [1]. The Nizhny Novgorod Chronicle preserves a record of extraordinary waves that hurled vessels nearly 50 metres onto the bank [2]; the river itself is described as having "formed great mounds" [3].
The monastery was rebuilt further upstream, closer to the city: the work was directed by the tsar's master mason Antip Vozoulin, Fyodor Oparin, and the elder Izosima, and by the mid-17th century the ensemble with its five-domed Voznesensky Cathedral had been completed [1].
What the calculations revealed
In 2003, the events of 1597 were re-examined: the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences published a preprint titled "The Nizhny Novgorod Tsunami of 1597 on the Volga River" [4].
Using the evidence preserved in the chronicle, the landslide was reconstructed numerically. A mass of soil approximately 300 by 200 metres slid into the Volga, and the wave at the monastery may have reached 25–30 metres — the height of a ten-storey building [2]. Estimates vary: another account of the same calculations puts the wave height at twenty metres [5].
Other events on the Volga
Volga waves are not confined to 1597. In the early 19th century a tsunami was triggered by a weak earthquake of intensity 6 near Kozmodemyansk in Chuvashia; similar events are recorded near Yelabuga in Tatarstan and the Sokskie Yary ravines in Samara Region [2].
The banks of Nizhny Novgorod Region's water bodies continue to slide to this day. Between 2001 and 2011, fifteen landslide events were recorded here, most of them on the banks of the Volga and the Oka; the areas most severely affected were Nizhny Novgorod itself, Pavlovsky District, Kstovsky District, and Bogorodsky District [6]. When a landslide occurred near Gorbatov in 2001, the waves it raised may have reached approximately one metre in height [6].
| Year | Location | Cause | What is known |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 June 1597 | near Nizhny Novgorod, Pechersky Monastery | landslide with a mass approximately 300 × 200 m | vessels were thrown ashore by almost 50 metres; estimated wave height 20–30 m [2][5] |
| early 19th century | Kozmodemyansk, Chuvashia | earthquake of intensity 6 on the scale | wave on the Volga [2] |
| — | Yelabuga area, Tatarstan | landslide | the event is recorded in the list of Volga tsunamis [2] |
| — | Sokskiye Yary, Samara Region | landslide | the event is recorded in the list of Volga tsunamis [2] |
| 2001 | Gorbatov, Nizhny Novgorod Region | landslide | estimated wave height approximately 1 metre [6] |
How Dangerous Is It Today
The Nizhny Novgorod school of wave physics studies landslide-generated tsunamis as a dedicated research area [3]. The reason is clear from the terrain: a long shoreline with high escarpments, landslides on the Volga–Oka slopes have been occurring here for centuries, and the Pechersky and Verkhniye Pechyory slopes continue to shift.
It is clear that in the Nizhny Novgorod Region the risk of tsunamis is relatively low. Since we live in an area that is not currently seismically active, any landslide-generated tsunamis will be highly localized. But this needs to be studied. And to say anything about possible tsunamis, a complete hazard map of landslides along the Volga shoreline must be compiled. [2]
The most famous landslide to generate a tsunami on the Volga occurred in 1597: the Pechersky Monastery literally slid into the river. [3]
Sources
- pecherskiy.nne.ru — Voznesenskiy Pecherskiy Muzhskoy Monastery — Chronicle of the Monastery (archive)
- nn.aif.ru — AiF — Nizhny Novgorod — No one is insured against a tsunami on the Volga. March 31, 2011 (archive)
- nn.aif.ru — AiF — Nizhny Novgorod — Beauty in science. A young scholar on stereotypes, awards, and tsunamis. March 16, 2015 (archive)
- search.rsl.ru — Russian State Library (archive)
- snob.ru — Snob — Borislav Kozlovskiy. Where the Japanese catastrophe could repeat itself. March 22, 2011 (archive)
- cyberleninka.ru — CyberLeninka