I began the huge Trans-Siberian railroad journey on Nov. 30th. The first leg of the trip was only a 4 hour train ride so I really eased in to things. I have stopped in Yaroslavl, a decent size city around 250 kilometers from Moscow. I’ll be here for two nights before getting on a new train for a 26 hour ride Friday, December 2nd(wish me luck). Yaroslavl is on the Volga River and used to be super industrial and a major shipping and trade port. Less things are made here now but oddly enough the engines for the new Superjet 100 plane engines are made here. Fun fact. But sadly a not so fun fact is the reason you likely have heard of this city. There was recently a lot about Yaroslavl in the news because their hockey team’s plane crashed and all the players died this past September.
Based on only one day east of Moscow, I am beginning to think that all of this time all I needed to do was leave Moscow to find the real Russia-and I think I’m going to like it. Today I met the most amazing people! I left Yaroslavl to visit the smaller city of Rybinsk, around 60 kilometers away. They have a community of people that live there kind of as refugees from a small village called Mologa. The village Mologa was chosen by Stalin to become a huge reservoir in 1941 so all the residents had no choice but to leave. Now their village and dozens of others are completely covered in water. The villagers were so tight back then that they still have a community association, a historical society and a museum about what happened to them. I met a 91 year old woman who used to live in Mologa and still cried thinking about leaving her home there. And I met an 87 year old man who had also lived there. Not only did he have to disassemble his house and move the whole thing from Mologa by boat to Rybinsk but his father died in one of Stalin’s GULAGS after being convicted of telling a joke about Communist ruling officials. Violation of article 58-“propaganda and agitation against the Soviet Union”. This amazing man not only rebuilt his wood house log by log in 1941 but he’s still living in it. He’s also a WWII vet who went to the front lines for the Soviets, even after the State killed his father. Unbelievable. I was totally in awe of this man and his lovely wife with her complete set of gold teeth! I want to be an honorary member of this Mologa club!
The community association as a whole (about 10 members) wouldn’t even let me leave until they provided me with tea, cake and brandy shots for the road! Not to mention the lovely 2012 date book and Mologa postcard! When I protested and said it wasn’t necessary they said, “it isn’t every day we get visitors from Washington”!
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| The lovely head of the Mologa Community Association |
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| The icy Volga River-it's almost frozen on Dec. 1st |
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| A memorial to GULAG workers who were killed in Rybinsk building the dam (all part of the flooding villages project)-this was the only GULAG camp in the European part of Russia. |
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| A lovely former Mologa resident-91 years old |
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| The wooden house that was un-built in Mologa and then re-built in Rybinsk. |
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