Volga, Volga, Volga!

The Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design Explores the Volga River. 

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Kazan style restavration - Farida Zabirova

Farida Zabirova is Deputy Chairman of the Tatarstan branch of the All-Russian Society for Protection of Monuments of Art and Culture.

« In the past people was settled on the rivers, nowadays people is settled on money-rivers”

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Zhigulevskaya Hydro Power Station - protagonist's view

Zhigulevskaya Hydro Power Station (GidroElectroStantsia) today was really impressive. Coming next to it first of all you see a dam and huge supports for electric cables. Astonishing experience of a comparison human and industrial scales.Unfortunately, only russians could enter it, these high security rules work since station was approved as an object of strategical importance. Station PR-lady guided us through the area and engines hall, so after the visit all nine of us had an excellent impression of everything connected to HPS. May be later we'll try to discover if it is the same all-goodness from another point of view, but tonight lets enjoy the official version.Zhigulevskaya HPS was open in 1955 and nowadays the biggest in its history modernization are taking place: 14 of 20 hydro-agregates will be changed with new ones. The renovation should be finished in 2018 and after this The HPS will be more ecological and it will be able to produce as much energy, as if it had 21 hydro engines instead of 20.Yellow granty cranes is a distinctive feature of Zhigulevskaya HPS, they exist only there. They are used in spring, late April to May, when river is so full that water should run free through the dam, otherwise upper part of river will be flooded. This period is different for every year and can last for several weeks. Volume and speed of water going through gates is calculated by engineers. If there is a necessity crane can open it even for 50 centimeters. Of course people in illegal cottages or dachas experience floods, but this process doesn't affect any regular housing.<img src="http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/.../4698.../0_9b5f1_f687802e_orig">The HPS is significantly well situated. The river there is so vast, that with a constant water supply from little rivers and streams it practically never experiences a shortage of water. Overall, there are two biggest water reservoir storage in Europe, both are on the Volga. First one is Volzhskoe, second one is Zhigulevskoe which we have seen today. The length of its water front is 5,5 km. Unbelievable, that people could do such amount of work so fast! Work of the HPS started in 1954 (December, 29) with only one engine under a shelter, and in august of 1955 all power station was opened. In the beginning, in winter people had to work in a very hard conditions, as it is said in the letters of that time, fingers were sticking to a cold metal. In spite of it, many sovietitians begged to allow them to take part in a construction. Being there was a reason to be proud. And the whole construction was legendary!Town Zhigulevsk was born on the construction site of the hydro power station and its' histories cannot be splited. There are a lot of lifestories behind it and there are a lot of families still living here.

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Samara Togliatti Syzran Agglomeration

As it was said by Michael Syardin, ex-chief architect of Togliatti and Administrations of Togliatti and present lead of GOPROGOR, an urban planning corporation, governments aof Togliatti and Samara now are on their way to a great collaboration. The plan is to create a modern and well developed settlement, the only multy-core agglomeration in Russia and the third megalopolis (2,5 mln citizens) in the country.

Concept of agglomeration development

The idea has a great potential, according to industrial development of the region, recreational natural resourses and transport location.

Samara transport node on a world scale of railway transportation (according to Michael Syardin).

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Togliatty Engineered Shores

Scheme of Togliatti coastline

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Real Estate Terrorism

In Astrakhan, there are many old houses made of wood. In general, they are in poor condition, but they are quite beautiful and often they are still inhabited. Meanwhile, forces of urbanism and politics are hard at work, and the result is the construction of new high-rise apartment buildings. This is partly an effort to accommodate a population said to be growing, to show development and progress as world leaders meet in Astrakhan, the "Capital of the Caspian," and partly the kind of land speculation common all over the world.

To build these new towers, the land must be purchased from its owners and the existing houses must be cleared. This process is violent. In the pre-dawn hours, especially in spring, the people of the old wooden neighborhoods are woken by the smell of smoke, the sounds of fire. Their neighbors are burning. Firefighters eventually arrive, but sometimes the fire spreads to other houses. Everyone lives in fear of fire, and the contracts offered by the developers are unfair and they exploit this fear.

Meanwhile, the typical, anonymous, and crude version of Russian urbanism destroys the true heritage of old Astrakhan.    

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Lifted Buildings

The buildings of Astrakhan and the Volga delta is lifted above the threat of flood. Foundations or footings are prominent elements of this high-water architecture. From deep basements above ground, to feet that hold buildings above the wet, to barges and boat hulls, solutions are visible everywhere. 

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Water system -master plan- today-1909-1876-1820 

in 1909 along the banks of the Volga were located fisheries and cooperage establishments where manufactured barrels for storing fish. Construction proceeded along the banks of the Volga River and canals. In Soviet times, banks were engaged in production of that isolated from the rest of the coast of the city. However, according to the plans of the general plan for future development along the shores of high-rise buildings will be followed by low buildings will follow that isolates the shore again from the rest of the city

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Westward Bound

The last hour of the last day in Astrakhan, the sun fell over the embankment of the engineered tributary (a gift from Azerbaijan). New houses on the lane that leads to the overgrown (but active) tuberculosis clinic. The built up ridges of the railroad bed, the approach to the Old Bridge over the Volga.

We stopped to fix a broken pedal, found the nut lying in the dirt a few meters back on our rutted path. The sound of the train, late, the first cars already gone by the time the clatter reached us. Boxcars, hoppers, brown-red in the rusty sun.

And then, like toys shrouded in their wrapping, the tanks, headed west. 

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Due to its geographical position on the south of the Volga river and proximity to the Caspian sea, along with the top down political decisions Astrakhan experienced bottom up cultural influences of the indian, iranian and persian merchants who brought their typical building typologies with them.

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Water divider

In 1960-s soviet engineers were developing the project of a water-power plant combined with water divider near the village Enotaevka. Creation of reservoir and construction of a giant dam was assumed (in order to prevent flooding of nearby steppes and a part of Volga-Akhtubinsk floodplain).

The consequences of the realization of this plan could be disastrous. It was decided to limit the project to the construction of water divider near the village Verhnelebyazhie. The building of Narimanov town began shortly.

"Conquer the Volga" - slogan that could be heard during the construction of water divider. 

1973 - the first launch of dam locations.

Water divider was placed in operation in 1977 and has been used only six times - in 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1988 and 1989, the total amount of working days is 160 (20-30 days per year).

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How are Volga towns tied to the identity of their regions?

Astrakhan town identity is extremely closely tied to the history of the Astrakhan region. Is it legitimate to trace this back to the Golden Horde times – the political elite were nomadic, living in yurts outside the city, bringing the identity of the steppe into the city. When Ivan IV conquered Astrakhan, he sent core populations out of the centre, and these populations have remained on the outskirts of the town, perhaps performing the same function

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St. Petersburg = Astrakhan...(=Venice)

Or so they have been trying to make out down here. Peter the Great built light-houses in the mouths of both the Volga and the Neva, opening up windows of trade. 

Ships, water and changeability are a crucial symbol to both these towns.

Both towns were built out of the chaos, order imposed on changing, uncertain lands with un-anchored peoples...see Медный Всадник...

Strangely, in an oil gift to Astrakhan from the Kazakh government, a statue of the Kazakh folk artist Kurmangazy, we see an echo of the Bronze Horseman in St. Petersburg. Notice that hand...half raising up a town, half repressing a people. Maybe a mere coincidence. Less of a coincidence...the Kurmangazy oil field, an offshore oil field located in the Kazakh section of the Caspian Sea on the maritime border between Russia and Kazakhstan.

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An original brick from Atil, an excavated city of the Golden Horde.

Next, a modern day pavement stone from Astrakhan with a pattern along similar motifs.

Third, the archaeologist who found the brick, one of the links from ancient to modern facilitating this cultural continuation. 

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Towards shallow memory and memory void in V3 Astrakhan

V1 & V2 versions of memory: REASON AND ORDER AT THE BORDER

Some of the efforts to design memory in the past (during V1 and V2) in Astrakhan were extreme.  

  Peter the Great was the first Tsar to visit Astrakhan. He came here to impose order, with an eye to good practice in Europe, as per usual. Having heard that there was a great deal of bribery and corruption in the town, he descended to the Astrakhan Kremlin and had the high-ranking culprits publicly thrashed in the 'лобное место' (place of public speeches and executions), with salted whips, obviously. A well-designed deterrent memory.

  In the early days of the Kremlin, there was a tower called the 'torture tower', where brutal means were applied. People had their arms tied behind their backs and were hoisted up from the walls, their arms torn out of their sockets. They were left to hang there until they died, we were told with relish by the guide. These were not Russia methods in fact, but inherited from the peoples of the region. After all, the Astrakhan Kremlin began as a community of only five-hundred Russians when it was founded by Ivan IV, with the Tatars dispatched to a Posad on the far bank of the channel. With time the Kremlin community grew into 'white town' beyond, but the original communities were very present, and the Kremlin's ways of making people talk were Turkic and Tatar. The river came right up to the Kremlin at this time, just the other side of the torture tower. Perfect for rolling bodies into the river.

  Peter the Great had the 'Torture Tower' renamed 'the artillery tower'. He wanted to extinguish the memory of the brutality that had occurred there. Time for Russia to get European and leave behind the dark ages.

  Over the years, the bank of the Volga silted up, leaving the Kremlin away from the river, but the people of the town continued to use the tower's original name: the 'torture tower'.

A similar, earlier example involves the rebellion of Stenka Razin in Astrakhan in 1672. When Razin's Cossacks took the town, they accused Saint Joseph of relations with Moscow and rolled him and others from the gently sloping roof of what later became known as 'накатная башня' ('rolling tower'), to their deaths. Once the town was recaptured and in safe hands, the Russian authorities simply had the tower destroyed to cast away all memory of these executions.

On a larger Europeanising scale, Astrakhan got the same 18th Century make-over that the other Volga towns got. The architect Alexander Digby was commissioned to design the town along European lines, which he did between 1793 and 1795. During a round table we had at the Regionology Museum, the local architecture professors stressed how Digby had studied how various parts of the town were already used and incorporated this as much as possible in his plan, while still bringing Catherine's beloved classicism to Astrakhan. The Asiatic spirit, they argued, was respected and preserved more than in other Volga towns. 

  In communist times, iconoclasm and irreverent re-purposing of churches was the norm throughout Russia. However, in Astrakhan there are two particularly brutal examples. Firstly, St. Vladimir's cathedral was used as a bus station. Secondly, the icons from the main cathedral in the Kremlin were removed and used as targets in the shooting range. This image is an incidental reminder:

In a sense, we see a continuation of V1 memory design during V2: shining the central light of reason on this wild asiatic crossroads.

V3: TWEE IDENTITY AND SHALLOW MEMORY IN AN OIL AND GAS TOWN

While in V1 and V2 there was heavy-handed memory design, we argue that in V3 the designers of memory (the owners of resources and power) are designing a flat and trivial memory.

In 2008, for the 450th anniversary of the founding of (Russian) Astrakhan', Lukoil and Gasprom funded a revamp of the most popular public spaces in the town. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan also financially supported the works. Most notably, they renovated the most visited embankment (Gazprom), another embankment (Azerbaijan) and two spots - the Swan Lake and the new statue to Peter the Great on the embankment and surrounding monumental area.

I ask Nurlan, a local taxi-driver and friend, what it was like before. 'Hard to say. Chaotic, a bit. Fences here and there.' When did you prefer it? 'Then'. 

  I ask a mother playing with her children what she thinks. 'It's much better now. Much more pleasant to bring children, you couldn't before, there were all sorts down here. I come every day. You can even get bikes and go along the embankment. You could never do that before. To me, it's more important that it's a pleasant environment, we'll mention to the children what the statues are, but just in passing, you know.'

 Nice new places for children to play:

Then the lady told me her childhood memories of the place…’There were huge piles of sand here, we used to play on them as children. Where the hotel is now [a face-less concrete shell]’

  Overhearing the conversation, a mad old woman approaches and urgently communicates that there used to be a river under this new statue to Peter Great. She manically waves her hand to show where the stream used to flow.

  By Swan Lake, a stone's throw away, we see a 2008 monument to the family with soviet echoes.

Other people are less positive about the renovation, especially on the embankment. 'There used to be a lot of greenery here, but they got rid of it.  It gets bloody hot here in summer and now there's no shelter. They cut down some really lovely old trees. I've no idea why they had to do that.'

  A big site alongside the embankment is fenced off. Big placards on the fence announce that Gazprom are building a multi-purpose sports complex. There are simulations of its plastic looking white bulk. One of the stadiums is boat-shaped in recognition of local history.

I ask some people what they think about the plan and get a variety of answers:

 ‘Why do we need another sports complex? We already have Zvezdny and Olympiad. Maybe it will be nice, but Gazprom will probably only let their own (своих) use it.’

  Another man was more positive: ‘It could be good, but I think they should build a river station instead. Keep the momentum up with livening up the embankment.’

  I asked a coffee seller who has been coming to the embankment every weekend for the last three years what he thinks. ‘Don’t really know about it to be honest.’ The huge empty plot is less than two hundred yards away.

  The town symbols and logos were also renewed in time for the 450th anniversary. Naturally, the sturgeon, the ship (also introduced everywhere, especially in playgrounds) and the lotus. The Volga delta lotus, which is very rare and rumoured to have been introduced by Buddhist monks, was only added to the town identity in 2008, for touristic purposes. 

2008 town symbols: 

DESIGNING MEMORYLESSNESS

  All of this town identity creation is very nice and well…But how deep does it really go? There is a making pleasant. Nurlan tells us what people think of Gazprom: ‘People are scraping around trying to survive here. It’s chronic, in the countryside the only thing is small-scale subsistence fishing. People are asleep to what Gazprom are doing. They don’t think about it.’

  The new spaces are more pleasant urban environments than before. They involve some history. But they don’t honour the memory of the place deeply. They are sterile, and they are a more humane cousin of other well-kept, yet sterile, dead spaces that can be found near the Lukoil and Gazprom buildings with their shiny, impenetrable facades. In the space outside the Lukoil building, we find a memorial to the victims of political repression. The space leads nowhere and feels almost memoryless. I learn more about the history of Astrakhan as an exile town (Ссылный город) talking to a flower-seller at the cemetery than I can here.

Memorial to victims of political repression in a sterile oil-sponsored place:

Another sterile Lukoil spot:

There is ritual in the Swan Lake. Children feed pigeons at the water’s edge. But again, the environs are built sterile and somehow memoryless, the shiny Gazprom office towers beyond. 

The renovations are OIL GIFTS. The president of Azerbaijan has a statue on the section of Astrakhan he funded. None of the locals can tell me anything about him, they can’t see a big connection. A statue for the Ukrainian poet Shevchenko is being designed, but a man in the park tells me the Shevchenko described Astrakhan as a god-forsaken hole. 'Shouldn't we have the founders of the town in the statues? There's the new statue to Peter the Great...what about Ivan the terrible!' 

President of Azerbaijan...an oil gift with dubious relevance to Astrakhan

We ask at the round table in the Regionology museum whether there was any consultation before the Gazprom embankment work. Of course not. We ask how people perceive these companies. There is a sense we are on a touchy subject. People want to talk about it, but also to get off the topic as quickly as possible. Gazprom support sport, we are told.

  We managed to speak to an employee of Gazprom at a mosque. ‘I go to Irkutsk. I wouldn’t work here. The oil here contains a really high concentration of wax and it’s bad for you. Some people have heart-attacks aged 29-30. It’s fucked up.’

  So there is a ‘bad-guy’ side to the narrative; but more pertinent for us is the sterilisation, the perhaps deliberate, perhaps careless design of shallow and often irrelevant history at the expense of memory. 

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In many neibourhoods, people take over the land inbetween the buildings and build shed like structures that resemble dachas in their structure. Some amenities like toilets and kitchens are being moved or duplicated in this improvised yards.

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Sarai-Batu 2.0

Sarai Batu - the city built several times is now more of an image than a real city. In its second incarnation, the city not only changed it's original site, but also got concentrated, shrinking from 5 by 6 kilometers to only 80 by 50 meters.

Becoming an ideal city where no part is missing and no part is useless it changed its function, turning from a real lively city to a dead-space movie setting.

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Astrakhan' gates.