Varya — a microdistrict and railway station in Moskovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod, at the beginning of Kominterna Street, right on the border with Sormovsky District.[1] The station is the terminus of the second Sormovo line of the suburban electric railway.[2] According to the planning project for the Sormovo section of the metro, the station is to be closed as redundant after the opening of the Sormovskaya metro station.[3]

A selʹtso on the Balakhna strelitsa

From the second half of the 18th century, the lands of what is now Moskovsky District were part of the Gordeevskaya volost of Balakhninsky Uyezd; the selʹtso of Varya stood here alongside the villages of Burnakovka, Gornushkino, Knyazhikha, Kostarikha, and Ratmanikha.[1] The area is low-lying — the floodplain between the Volga and the Oka, the "Balakhna strelitsa," which was constantly waterlogged by groundwater and floodwaters and cut through by a network of small streams.[1] Nearby flowed the Levinka with its tributaries the Beryozovka, the Varya, and the Parasha.[1]

In the 19th century, Varya was part of the first stan of Gordeevskaya volost. By the early 20th century, the settlements adjoining Sormovo had merged into a continuous line along the Nizhny–Balakhna highway, forming the Varinsky and Daryinsky vyselki (outlying settlements).[1]

By a decree of the uyezd zemstvo board of October 15, 1917, the Sormovskaya volost was created, and the selʹtso of Varya together with the vyselok of Varyonok were transferred into it from the dissolved Gordeevskaya volost.[1] In 1924, Varya was incorporated into the Sormovo Workers' District; in the late 1920s it was brought within the boundaries of the unified city; in 1936 it became part of the Kaganovich District, the predecessor of Moskovsky District, established in 1970.[1]

The former villages were absorbed by factory settlements. Today they are recalled only by the names of the microdistricts — "Varya" and "Burnakovka."[1]

The origin of the name

The "Nizhny Novgorod Toponymic Dictionary" by Nikolay Morokhin records a local legend: the settlement's name is linked to a landowner's daughter to whom these lands were gifted.[4] The same legend is retold in Nizhny Novgorod newspapers.

There is also another explanation rooted in local geography: the Varya River once flowed nearby, and Balakhninsky District had long sustained itself on salt-boiling — varnitsy (salt works) — from which the name may have derived.

The Plant

In 1873, Viktor Ragozin's oil-refining plant opened in Varya — one of those enterprises where peasants from surrounding villages came to work, alongside Krasnoye Sormovo.[1] The plant later passed to Ter-Akopov, during the Soviet era bore the name of the 26 Baku Commissars, and subsequently gave its name to the Varya petroleum and lubricants plant.[1]

The industrial site outlasted the production itself: in 2025, a planning project was approved for the former factory grounds of approximately 87 hectares on Sormovskoe Highway, earmarked for housing and new enterprises.

Gaidar in Varya

When the Golikov family arrived in Nizhny Novgorod in 1909, they settled first in the Varya settlement, not far from Sormovo: the father of the future writer Arkady Gaidar worked as an inspector at the Sormovo Plant.[5] In 1910, the Golikovs moved to Varvarskaya Street, and in 1912 left for Arzamas.[5]

The Urban Rail Service

Varya Station is the terminus of the second Sormovo line of the urban rail service, running from Pochinki Station on Korablestroyiteley Avenue to Varya on Sormovskoe Highway, with an intermediate stop in the center of Sormovo.[2] The journey takes ten minutes.[2]

Trains run daily from 5:26 to 20:02; during morning and evening peak hours on a clock-face timetable, departing from Varya station at 20 and 50 minutes past each hour, and once every forty minutes during the day.[2][6] EP3D-series electric trains with air conditioning are in service; a journey costs 30 rubles with a Siticard, and the transfer fare is 45 rubles for ninety minutes.[2]

The urban rail project has been run by Gorky Railway and Volgo-Vyatskaya Prigorodnaya Passazhirskaya Kompaniya since 2013. In 2025, all lines together carried 1.35 million passengers, of whom 518,000 travelled on the Pochinki–Varya section.[6]

The fate of the station

On 30 October 2023, a layout plan drawn up by Nizhegorodgrazhdanproekt was put out for public consultation: it provides for the complete elimination of the infrastructure of Varya station and the tracks leading to it — the "loss of its necessity" is explained by the opening of the Sormovskaya metro station in the area of Stantsionnaya Street.[3]

Metro construction is under way: by 1 September 2026, 678 of the 726 planned garages had been purchased to extend the line, with a further forty structures being compulsorily acquired through the courts.[7] Before that, in 2022, the city also abandoned its own Varya metro station — it was deemed redundant given the nearby Burevestnik station.

Sources

  1. biblmr.r52.ru — History of Moskovsky District — Centralized Library System — Centralized Library System of Moskovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod… (archive)
  2. vvppk.ru — Urban commuter rail "Sormovskaya Line" (archive)
  3. GIPERNN — Elimination of the Varya railway station is provided for in the metro planning project in Sormovo (archive)
  4. Morokhin N. V. Nizhny Novgorod Toponymic Dictionary — Nizhny Novgorod: KiTizdat, 1997 — entry "Varya"
  5. ngounb.ru — Literary Map of Nizhny Novgorod Region (archive)
  6. napp52.ru — 1.35 million people used the "Urban Commuter Rail" routes in Nizhny Novgorod in 2025 — NAPP — … (archive)
  7. V gorode N — 678 garages seized for construction of a new metro station in the center of Sormovo (archive)