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Ryazan Island: chthon, museum, new buildings

Apartment buildings may replace the wooden architecture museum on Ryazan Island.

The Museum of Wooden Architecture in Suzdal, Taltsy in the Irkutsk Region, Kizhi Island in Karelia, and others are open-air museums. Another one could have appeared in Ryazan—a few hundred meters from the Kremlin, in the village of Ostrov. This man-made peninsula, immersed in greenery, in the very center of the city, has preserved wooden buildings from the mid-20th century and the unique history of the Soviet period. For decades, preservationists and local historians have argued that the construction of an open-air museum of wooden architecture would make Ostrov a tourist destination and generate stable revenue for the budget. But the museum never materialized. And last August, the governor Pavel Malkov allowed the construction of apartment buildings up to nine stories high in this area.

NeMoskva reports on how people are living on the Island while awaiting development, while preservationists try to defend it.

Beyond the bridge, under the domes

A couple dozen multi-apartment buildings, half of which are two-story wooden barracks; an abandoned outdoor toilet, rickety sheds, broken mailboxes with empty insides—this is the village of Ostrov. In its center are the remains of a basketball court with a rusty, lonely hoop, benches without seats, a carousel, and a slide. People say of such places that time has stood still here. But there is no devastation in the traditional sense of the word on Ostrov: the few residents protect the empty apartments from casual guests, plant flowers, trim trees, and maintain cleanliness and order. And the most astonishing thing here is the view of the ancient kremlin, erected on a high earthen rampart. It seems to float above Ostrov. The kremlin was founded in 1095—this date is considered the year of the city's founding. Its domes are visible from anywhere in the village.

The island is a man-made embankment on the banks of the Trubezh River, created to facilitate shipping, which flourished at the beginning of the last century.

More than a hundred years ago, the island didn't exist. In the 1920s, a plan was made to create a harbor for wintering ships, dredging the river and dumping the bottom soil. In the late 1940s, they began to reinforce the embankment with greenery and build houses for watercraft workers. Ten years later, two-story barracks were occupied, and an office for the technical section of water transport was established. A store then appeared, specially stocking hard-to-find goods (including wine, candy, and sausage) from the capital for watercraft workers. A plan was made to create an alley with a Lenin statue in the center. In 1970 and 1994, the island was flooded during high waters; water reached the ground-floor windows, and residents were temporarily evacuated. During perestroika, the only store was closed as unprofitable, and just under a decade ago, most of the buildings were declared unsafe.

To reach the Island on foot, you must walk through the Kremlin grounds, descend a metal staircase to the pier, then cross a pontoon bridge that wobbles underfoot, and then climb back up the stairs. The steps are riddled with gaping holes, making the journey dangerous even for the physically fit in winter. Before the road was built, this route was used to transport the sick and dead "to the mainland."

On a weekend afternoon, the island seems deserted: one grandmother climbs the stairs to the Kremlin with her grandson, another walks a child in a stroller, and a pensioner attaches something to the roof of an extension to his house. The first local resident we encountered was laconic:

You won't write anything anyway, TV crews have already come to us, filmed, but nothing came of it.

The locals tell this story to every tourist and journalist who wanders here: they truly didn't get a story about their problems. It happened many years ago, but for the islanders, it seems like yesterday.

A local resident carries a box of metalworking tools from his shed. He chuckles:

Are you going to take pictures too? Some girls recently arrived and took pictures in front of our house, as if we had—what did my grandson say?—something going on here. Sure, there's no store, the trees aren't being cleared, the lighting isn't being installed, and this same thing is everywhere. But it's still unpleasant. A couple of people are writing complaints everywhere, but to no avail. We just need to get everything in order here and keep living.

But, according to the interviewee, there's nature, clean air, the sound of church bells, and plenty of space—there's plenty of room to plant a flower garden, park the car, and grill shashlik. The family has an apartment in the city, but they only go there "to wash up and then straight back." Getting to the city over the bridge isn't easy, but almost everyone has a car.

Back under Kovalev [Oleg Kovalev, governor from 2008 to 2017], there was a rumor that apartment buildings would be built here. Some buyers from a Moscow construction company showed up and started buying up apartments. The second floor of the neighboring building was also bought; it's now vacant. All the plans quickly fizzled out, and no one built anything.“, recalls a local resident.

However, one oddity haunts him: at first, the Island was officially part of the city limits, then it became a microdistrict, and now it is a village. Cadastral value The price isn't too high right now. Land under a two-story apartment building of 900 square meters in the very center of the city, just steps from the Kremlin, currently costs 2,1 million rubles. A 700 square meter plot under a neighboring apartment building costs 1,6 million rubles. Plots under one- and two-family houses cost 1,1 million rubles. Abandoned dachas on the outskirts of Ryazan, near industrial enterprises, are worth much more.

The local resident hasn't heard anything else about the development of apartment buildings on the Island. On the contrary, he's confident that a wooden architecture museum will appear here sooner or later: "They've been talking about this for decades, haven't they?"

A museum that remained on paper

The first dream of a museum was shared about 50 years ago by an ethnographer and local historian from the All-Russian Society of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIiK) Natalia Lebedeva.

"Natalya Ivanovna's (and many city residents') cherished dream was to create an open-air ethnographic museum in Ryazan—complete with a section of the wooden Kremlin, authentic huts decorated with carvings, a forge, and cooper's and potter's workshops. There would even be room for a flapping windmill... During her travels, while working on construction projects, she would identify sites to be relocated to Ryazan. But that dream was never realized—the museum still doesn't exist." says in biographical texts about Lebedeva.

She passed away in 1978. At that time, she was the executive secretary of the Ryazan branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIiK) worked Vera ChernyshovaIn 2002, she was elected chairperson. It was she who preserved many of Lebedeva's documents, ideas, and memories, and also spoke about the need to create a museum on the Island. Chernyshova died in 2017.

Lebedeva's student and associate, teacher, artist, and oldest member of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments Alexander Babiy For many years he promoted the same idea of creating a museum of wooden architecture.

In the 1970s, the Ryazan branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIiK) hired architects who traveled throughout our districts, documenting and sketching unique wooden structures—houses, window frames, wells, windmills, and watermills. Alexander Nikolaevich said that this "wooden creativity absolutely must be collected in one place." He particularly dreamed of placing a watermill on the Island; the river's current would allow it to operate. — a close friend of the urban preservationist told the correspondent. — Together with the Kremlin, it would have been a sought-after tourist destination. There's no question of "charity" or "free" being involved; such a museum would have generated a healthy profit. But for decades, only mayors and governors changed, while the situation with the Island remained unchanged.

Last summer, 82-year-old Babiy died.

Urban preservationists believed that the territories of the Island and the Kremlin should be considered as a single semantic and architectural zone, without separating them.

In the mid-1970s, there was another project regarding the Island, which the local historian recalls Igor KanaevAccording to him (the project itself could not be found either online or in other sources), the Island was supposed to be resettled, “make a beautiful hill in the form of an alpine slide and put up [a monument] to Sergei Yesenin twenty times larger than he is now it's worth».

The last "peaceful" project for the transformation of the Island was announced in 2009. Then, the Deputy Prime Minister Valery Ionov announced The emergence of the "Kremlin Posad" architectural and tourist project on the Island. The plan called for the settlement to include utilities and a recreational area that would blend into the Kremlin's architectural ensemble. An ecologically clean zone was also to be created on the Island: the riverbed would be cleared, the banks reinforced, and landfills eliminated. The project remained on paper and in some online sources.

Over the years of promoting all these ideas, much has changed, including the Kremlin's purpose: while it was previously a historical and architectural museum-reserve complex, it has now been transferred to the Ryazan Diocese, along with all its buildings, even those not of religious significance. Discussions about this began in 2006, and the eviction of the museum and all its exhibits was finally completed in December 2023. Historians, local historians, preservationists, and archaeologists have been working on this for several years. spoke out against The transfer of the Kremlin to the Russian Orthodox Church was unsuccessful. At the same time, requests from major construction companies for development permits on land adjacent to the Kremlin began to emerge.

In 2016, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky issued an order, according to which the territory of a federal cultural heritage site—the landmark "Ancient City of Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky and its Defensive and Architectural Structures of the 12th-19th Centuries"—can be developed with four-story buildings with underground parking. Ryazan residents were outraged, and Metropolitan Mark of Ryazan and Kasimov. is he call the construction of the Kremlin is blasphemy.

The Ryazan residents' protest was large-scale and noisy, and the development project in the Kremlin area was cancelled. This topic did not come up for several years.

There were And even more odious plans for the Kremlin grounds. For example, razing the Kremlin rampart to make way for a new trolleybus route, and laying a storm drain and sewer system across the floodplain, right at the foot of the ancient buildings. The Ryazan residents rejected all of these ideas.

In 2025, Governor Malkov allowed to build the historical part of the city—the Kremlin area, including the Island—with buildings up to 9 stories high. However, back in 2022, it was going to to build a tourist walking route there and assured that there would be no housing construction.

"A brazen slap in the face to the city"

According to the resolution, for development have fallen The streets adjacent to the Kremlin, historically lined with low-rise buildings, have been redesigned. Heritage conservationists have studied the project and concluded that within a few years, the Kremlin will be hidden from public view behind a dense fence of apartment buildings.

In September last year, the deputy chairman of the Ryazan branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments Igor Kochetkov filed a lawsuit demanding that Malkov's decree be declared invalid. The preservationist claimed that Malkov's decree violated the ban (RF Government Resolution No. 972 of September 12, 2015) on new construction within the protected zone of a cultural heritage site.

"Pavel Malkov grossly violated the laws protecting cultural heritage sites and threatened to violate citizens' constitutional rights to access cultural treasures. This was a blatant slap in the face for the people of Ryazan."- wrote then he's on social media.

In early June of this year, the court dismissed the lawsuit after hearing it in Kochetkov's absence. During the hearing, the preservationists faced significant pressure: first, Kochetkov accused of slander against the largest construction company, then a similar criminal case started on the 71-year-old chairman of a public organization Andrey Petrutsky. While he was pursuing the case regarding the proposed Ostrov development, Kochetkov was also challenging the criminal libel case and was eventually admitted to cardiology. After his discharge, he received a sick leave certificate with numerous recommendations, including avoiding stressful situations. He notified the court of this by filing a motion to postpone the hearing. The judge Valery Logvin In the operative part, he noted that the plaintiff's absence was a "voluntary expression of the party's will," and that his presence "was not recognized as mandatory by the court," and held the hearing without the plaintiff and his lawyer. Logvin dismissed the claim.

Kochetkov is preparing an appeal, a source familiar with the situation told NeMoskva.

The Ghostly Art Street

Meanwhile, a new community has emerged in Ryazan Art Street. Revival of Wooden Ryazanwhich he dreams of creating on the Island art space — a street lined with last-century houses, with carved wooden window frames. So that the place would come to life, and cafes, galleries, and shops would appear there. The plans are grand: to restore some of the Ostrov's houses, to recreate others, or to move them from the city center—those in danger of destruction or demolition. The Ryazan mayor's office has apparently approved the project, but advised First, practice on a smaller-scale project—restoring a house, for example.

And then Malkov's decree came out.

"The development regulations for this area were recently changed—now 8-9-story residential buildings are permitted. This effectively paves the way for the emergence of an elite neighborhood in the very center of the city, in a quiet location with views of the river and the Kremlin." have described potential threat to the project in the Art Street community.

The activists did manage to implement a couple of important plans. This included preserving the Island's modern appearance and the carved window frames designed by Ryazan architects. However, the Island has been preserved only in virtual form. in a photo project, platbands - in children's drawings.