LOCAL HISTORY IS THE NEW BLACK

Local history is combined with urban conservation

I've always been concerned about preserving Tomsk's cultural heritage. That's what I wrote about. dragged into the urban conservation topic.

But when you write something like, “What a wonderful house, it could be torn down” – then you understand that you need to put some kind of story behind it, to work on the topic more deeply.

I'm an expert and speaker at Tomsk Polytechnic University's "I'll Show You" school of guides. We're on a tour and see, for example, a beautiful building with a small window on top. It's a beautiful round window, but it's either fallen out or crooked.

I speak: "When you walk and see something like this, it can be confusing. "Find the building's owner and notify them there's a problem with the window. Imagine if there were 100,000 people like him, and we could fix every little detail. What would happen to Tomsk then? It would be a different city!"

A mural with a portrait of Grigory Potanin, a researcher, public figure, one of the founders and a major ideologist Siberian regionalismCreated as part of the "Tomsk is People" project. Source: personal archive.

A mural depicting Maria Bochkareva, one of the first Russian female officers. She grew up in the Tomsk province. Created as part of the "Tomsk is People" project. Source: personal archive.

To understand the value of something, you have to lose it. In 2019, I moved to Sevastopol. It was planned to be a one-way trip, but my family and I drove, saw different cities along the way, and realized that our Tomsk is truly amazing. Moreover, only in Sevastopol—a city with history—did I realize that Tomsk's history is even greater, something we rarely hear about. I was hooked. Two months later, my family and I returned to Tomsk.

It all started with an unsightly booth on Klyueva 26, where unknown individuals had graffitied it with obscenities. I thought, what can I do? I wrote to the booth's owners. They replied that they would paint it over, but then they would paint it gray. I didn't like that. I took a trowel, cleaned the signs off the booth, scraped off the dirt, and filled the holes in the surface. And together with an artist friend, we painted Ivan Moskvitin, a Cossack who served in Tomsk and was the first to reach the Pacific Ocean.

This sparked an unexpected and powerful public response. Yes, Tomsk had always been a place of painting, and quite a bit, but Moskvitin was a new chapter, one that people warmly welcomed. They encouraged me to continue. Thus, the "Tomsk is People" project was born.

In the third year of the project, the Tomsk Department of Youth Policy allocated funds for it. We launched free educational lectures. Then we expanded it to a local history festival.Siberiada"—in honor of Andrei Konchalovsky's film of the same name. We'll be holding it for the fifth time in 2024.

Konstantin Cherenkov near a mural depicting the Tomsk Cossack and explorer Ivan Moskvitin. Source: personal archive.

An example of Tomsk's famous wooden architecture, this house with an outbuilding known as the "House with Firebirds" was built in 1903. It was part of the estate of merchant Leonty Zhelyabo.

A house on Vyacheslav Shishkov Street, named after the Russian Soviet writer and engineer. He worked in Tomsk for 20 years and called Siberia his "second homeland." Source: 2GIS

I became interested in local history as a child. I always loved history and loved reading history books. It was one of the topics that interested me most, besides games, movies, and literature.

I began studying local history seriously and found my way onto a professional path when I began hosting the "Name of a Tomsk Street" project on Echo of Moscow radio in Tomsk, where I worked as a journalist. I began collecting information about the people after whom Tomsk streets were named, summarizing it, and turning it into short audio clips, which were broadcast interspersed between news and commercials. Before this, I'd primarily been consuming information about Tomsk's history, and now suddenly I'd become one of its sources.

After that, I began publishing on local history topics on local portals - "V Tomske," TV2, "Tomsky Obzor." I participated in a project about guidebooks I wrote about the districts of Tomsk Zaozerye, cooked guide on Soviet modernism, was part of a project about Tomsk masters past, did the publication of о master carriage makers, wrote about brick making in Tomsk.

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Rally against the construction of a landfill in Syktyvkar. November 9, 2019. Photo by Kirill Shein for 7 x 7.

Svetlana Tyurnina with tourists. Photo from her personal archive.

My mother was Komi, and my father was Udmurt. I was born after the war and lived my whole life in the Komi Republic. I can't talk about life in big cities because I've always lived in small villages.

After graduating from teacher training college, I worked wherever I was assigned. I went to one village, worked, and met my husband. Then, to another village. I worked at the school for 43 years and traveled with my children my entire life. We traveled practically every vacation, visiting almost every Soviet republic.

And then suddenly, in the republic, as in the whole country, a conversation began about local history, about family history, about local tourism... Now I think that nothing more beautiful than our republic exists, but back then my hair stood on end - what tourism?!

But they started bringing guests to our village of Yb. Because it's not far from Syktyvkar and there's something to see. It's a pilgrimage temple. Museum interesting, created by a teacher from our village, it bears her name. Now also ethnoparkYou've probably heard of this phenomenon? We dreamed that people would come here to relax and develop along with the village. Our history isn't great yet, but people still come. And almost everyone says, "We want to go to the park." So, I led them there and told them about it.

Eventually, they invited me to work. I was already retired, and I thought, "Well, I'll have a little extra cash for my pension." But then it turned out I needed to bring people from Syktyvkar, to conduct a road trip along the way... That's how, miraculously, so to speak, I got into tourism.

And local history is a separate topic, because without local history you can't do tourism; you have to know the history, and not just of your own village. That's why I've traveled all over the republic, been everywhere. Otherwise, how can you tell stories when you can't see them? To tell stories, you have to travel and experience everything. My husband and I do this, and he never says no.

It all started in 2018. I was already a political activist by then, participating in protests and solo pickets. I also moved from Syktyvkar to St. Petersburg, where I was studying to be a psychologist.

Nostalgia or not, but the connection to the homeland feels stronger when you're away from it. That's probably why I wanted more Komi in my life. There wasn't enough media that talked about Komi culture. Not so much about mythology and the like, but about contemporary culture, about how it exists right now, including in political space.

It all started as a VKontakte public page, where I was the sole author. I wanted something bigger, but at first it was just a blog—about the Komi people, about culture, about identity. Posts were infrequent, and the audience was small, though very, very focused.

Now Komi Daily — is a project about Komi identity and Komi culture with almost three thousand subscribers on three platforms (telegrams, instagram, twitter).

The village of Yb consists of 18 hamlets, which are called "mestechki." Source: Georgy Krasnikov's LiveJournal.

Holy Ascension Church in the village of Yb, Komi Republic. Source: "Vacation in Komi," Zen.

Valera Ilyinov pasted the following slogans onto the "Bolt on Sanctions" art piece: "Constitution," "VAT Increase," "Oil Spills in Northern Komi," and more. Source: Ambivert.

Valera Ilyinov at a picket. The placard reads, "Stop sleeping, my Komi people." Source: Komi Daily.

Announcement of the blocking of the Komi Daily public page. Source: the publication's page on VKontakte.

"At the Spinning Wheel," 1929. Photographer: Grigory Andreevich Nechaev. Source: State Budgetary Cultural Institution "P. I. Subbotin-Permyak Komi-Permyak Museum of Local History".

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[40′′]

From the very beginning, of course, there was no information [about specific villages, their traditions, or their activities]. Everything has to be reconstructed, often from the words of living villagers.

It's difficult. Many villages have already disappeared, in many places there aren't even cemeteries anymore, nothing remains. Or there are people living there who don't want to leave, and it's difficult to reach them. The elderly die, and with them, history.

Let's say, in our area, in the Syktyvdinsky district, there were fifty villages; only three remain. We travel around, putting up various signs—some on ruins, and sometimes just on trees—to say, "Look, this was here." The people who still live in the villages become guides, telling tourists about their settlement and the surrounding ones. But, unfortunately, they, too, are leaving...

The most important thing now is, on the one hand, not to resort to self-censorship, and on the other, not to have our resources (social media pages, website) restricted. We've already been blocked. public page on VKontakte, and it’s not very clear why.

There are also financial difficulties. Now, when a team was assembled, the question arose about whether it's necessary to pay those who write texts. Especially those who produce complex, in-depth texts that require a week or two of research.

Finding money isn't easy. In 2021, we managed to raise funds simply through social media. Then we paid for hosting. Site, so that you can publish texts not only on VKontakte. There are several monthly subscriptions for donations, but this money, of course, does not cover all needs.

Current events in Russia are also influencing local historians.

Before the recent events in our country, many foreign tourists came to Komi. Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians. Because there used to be a lot of them here, exiles. Unfortunately, this story has ended againWe'll probably survive this too.

Back in 2020-2021, there were threats – like, I’m involved in separatism. But the bigger Part of the audience left in 2022. First of all, those who are in one way or another connected with government institutions or support the authorities. For them, it was unacceptable anti-war statements are unacceptable и criticism of power generally.

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There is interest in local history, but only among a few so far

As a child, I wasn't interested in the history of my hometown. If my grandmother, my parents, and I, who are no longer with me, had told me all this, maybe things would have been different. But they probably weren't interested when they were young either, so it's all fragments... The main difficulty is that many are still not interested. It remained like that - in fragments and only with those who are interested, that's all.

The difficulty, first of all, is to reach out to people who have Komi ancestors or some strong connection with the Komi, but at the same time don't feel like they're Komi, they don't know the language, they don't speak it. This was partly successful, but the main audience is still those who are already "in the know."

Komi local historians are installing a plaque on the grave of Solomonia Kolegova, the mother of Yegor Kolegov, a renowned Komi satirist, children's poet, and translator (he translated Chekhov, Mayakovsky, Bedny, and others into Komi). Photo from personal archive.

An example of a Komi Daily post. Source: the publication's Instagram page.

Zyryan (Komi) alphabet, created by Stefan Permsky.

The Velva logging and tractor base in the Komi-Permyak National Okrug, 1935. Source: Komi-Permyak Museum of Local History.

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Now, a large circle of local historians has formed in the republic - local historians of the village, district, and republic. It has been revived Society for the Study of the Komi Region, whose activities were interrupted, we celebrated a hundred years last year. About thirty years ago, people united in the organization "Komi voytyr", I'm friends with everyone there too.

I lead tours all over the Komi Republic, and I meet many people who are beginning to search for their roots. In August [2023], we had a large, representative group—children, teachers. And literally everyone started remembering—my grandparents were there. repressed...

We had several tests coming out. One of ours test More than 14,000 people took the "How Well Do You Know the Komi Language" quiz. That's quite a number for a region with a current population of 700,000. Although it's clear that the participants weren't limited to those living in the Komi region or those with any connections; some were simply curious. Regardless, people later wrote, "Thank you for such initiatives," and "I learned a lot about the Komi language, even though I haven't lived in Komi for a long time."

interest in the history of the native region is growing

And also children... I remember when we were just starting out, 20-30 years ago, everything was very timid. Now the cohort of children has grown, who in the 10th-11th grade are very seriously involved in their family tree or some kind of local history activities.

There was also test, related to words that are similar to words in other languages, including Russian. Fewer people took this test, but the age range is very pleasant — The test was taken by both elementary school students and people in their 60s and 70s. This means it can engage all generations.

A monument to the letter Ӧ, erected in Syktyvkar in 2011. One of the symbols of the republic.

Street protest. The poster reads, "Protect our Komi language." Source: 7 x 7.

Svetlana Tyurnina (right) and activist, guide of the village of Yb Nina Turova (left). Photo from personal archive.

In the conditions we live in now, it seems to me very important to love the place where you grew up, where your family lives, where you were given the impetus for an education and for you to see the whole world.

It's important to support cultural diversity and linguistic diversity in general. For me, this is a value in itself; it leads to greater tolerance and visibility for those who have previously been underrepresented.

It's also an opportunity to talk about issues that have been hushed up. For example, the Komi have always felt lower in the hierarchy than Russians. research, which show that the Komi have so-called "cultural embarrassment" - they are embarrassed to show their Komi identity. Officials do not like about this to say that this does not fit into their picture of the world, where everything is good, where the Komi and Russians are equal, there is peace, friendship, chewing gum.

But it's important to talk about it. And for some people, such conversations are therapeutic because they carry traumas from childhood. Now they can discuss them more openly. Overall, I see that young Komi people have become more open. For example, they're no longer shy about speaking Komi in Syktyvkar, which is predominantly Russian-speaking.

For Valentine's Day, Komi Daily released a series of "valentines" with phrases in the Komi language. Source: the publication's Instagram page.

An example of Tyumen wooden architecture is the house of the Tyumen merchants Chiralov. Sergei Chiralov was a tannery owner. Source: CityT.

The city administration building, which later housed the local history museum. 1907–1908. Source: Retro View.

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The only newspaper we had was "Rabota," where we looked for job openings. And there were no openings at all in the arts or leisure fields. You have a diploma with honors, but where do you go with it? No matter where you apply, there are no openings. Not at the cultural centers, not at the philharmonic, not at Neftyanik.

I spent a year and a half working for a company selling plastic constructions. Then I realized I needed to move on and saw an ad for a museum looking for a tour guide. And that "tour guide" really took off. During my school years, I was indirectly preparing for this profession. At the vocational training center, I took a job organizing children's activities. We had an amazing teacher, Margarita Grigoryevna Mikheykina (I'll always remember her name), who incorporated into the program not only competitions and quizzes but also a strong focus on local history. We studied the histories of streets, the origins of Tyumen, Tobolsk, and other cities. My first steps in local history began right then.

The museum's salaries were very low. My first salary was about 3900 rubles. My parents helped. My mom said, "You have an apartment, we'll pay for it, we'll feed you, but you need to gain experience." For that, I'm incredibly grateful to her. Because of all the 32 people who graduated with me, not a single one stayed in culture, art, or tourism. Some ended up in car loans, some in banking... I was the only one left.

For the first ten years, I read nothing but local history books. I had local history books in every corner of the house, in my bag, everywhere.

I graduated from the Institute of Philology at Tyumen State University. I have a bachelor's degree in book publishing and am an editor. I work as a journalist. At one point, I became fascinated with urban planning and urban development. I thought this was my niche. write about the development of the city.

But the more I wrote, the more I realized there was an area that interested me most, one that made my insides clench with a burning curiosity. It was the history of cultural heritage. Building on that, I became interested in the history of Tyumen families. I'd be interested, for example, in this or that outstanding example of wooden architecture; I wanted to study its history, and then I'd become curious—who lived there?

Amateurism does not diminish the value of local history research

My ABC's became the book "Walks in Tyumen" by Alexander Ivanenko. He writes in an accessible language, and he himself is an amateur local historian, he taught in a completely different field than this one, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences.

If I call myself a local historian, they add the prefix "amateur". An amateur local historian. Yes, I don't have a history educationBut at the same time, there are original studies—of the Tekutyevsky Cemetery, for example. This is precisely the area where I discover new facts.

Marina Safina at the monument to Grigory Rasputin in Tyumen. Photo from her personal archive.

Marfa Pimenova's grave is no longer unmarked. Source: "We Lived" page on VKontakte.

A tour guide dressed as Agnes Wardropper. Photo from the Tyumen Merchant's Wife page. on VKontakte.

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I don't have enough time to spend in the archives, but our team is digging up the stories of the characters we portray on tours. For example, I'm working as Apollinaria Ivanovna Sheshukova. We learned from the archives that she came from Tomsk. She wanted to open a wine shop in Tyumen, but something went wrong, so she opened a tailor shop instead. She remarried and met Sheshukov in Tyumen. We're currently searching for information about where Apollinaria Ivanovna is buried, what happened to her, and whether she stayed in Tyumen or not.

Or, for example, our tour guide, Alina—she has a peculiarity: she speaks like a Parisian, she has a hearing problem, and that's why she pronounces things differently. I say, "Alina, you must be a foreigner. Let's say you're Agnes Wardropper." They once arrived They came to us from Scotland. And Alina started researching… You can't find much online—we made requests to archives. In Yekaterinburg, we found a book written about this family; you can order it, work with it for two weeks, and then send it back to Yekaterinburg. Alina compiled Agnes's family tree and learned that she has relatives in Nizhnyaya Tavda.

And—can you imagine!—then a group from Nizhnyaya Tavda comes to us on a tour, and people come up to us and say: we are Wardropper, we live in Nizhnyaya Tavda, this is our great-great-grandmother.

A girl from Perm once wrote to me and said that her great-grandmother, Marfa Pimenova, was buried at Tekutyevsky Cemetery and that she'd really like to find her grave. We immediately said, "Tanya, it's unlikely we'll find her, because the cemetery archives had burned down, and we'd already made an inventory and knew we'd never seen such a grave."

But she did find two artifacts in the family archive. First, a piece of squared paper on which someone, many, many years ago, had drawn a map showing the route to Marfa's grave. Second, a photograph from her burial site.

So, based on the external survey and the graves in the background, they found the grave—an unmarked cross that was already sinking into the ground. Tanya and her sister were visiting Tyumen. put up a sign, now the grave is not nameless.

Miracles happen to all local historians

We are getting closer to these people here and now. I don’t know if we knew each other a hundred years ago, but it feels like in this reality our atoms are united.

There are many unmarked graves at Tekutyevsky Cemetery—either the paint has worn off or the plaque has been stolen. Identifying them is difficult. A helpline is always helpful. either incredible luck or an incredible accident.

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There are still many blank spots in the region's history.

There are few local history materials on TyumenIf you come to Moscow or St. Petersburg, you'll see a huge number of books written. Here, you can just count them on your fingers.

There's a lot to discover in the cemetery, but it's really unexplored. When we started exploring the cemetery, we were like, "Okay, let's look for local history literature!" Surely historians and local historians have already studied this place well before us! The fact that We found that it was literally just one article. in a book by local historian Sergei Kubochkin and a couple of journalistic materials.

A plaque at the entrance to Tekutyevsky Cemetery, a historic cemetery in central Tyumen. Source: personal archive.

Then, thanks to Dasha Novikova, the owner of the independent bookstore "Nobody Sleeps," the story about the Tekutyevsky Cemetery in the city center came up. Dasha and I have been friends for a long time. One day, she came over and said she'd been to Tekutyevsky. was amazed his terrible condition.

We started thinking about what we could do. We realized we needed significant funding. I work in the media myself, interacting with officials, so I knew it wouldn't work, for example, to create a petition for the reconstruction of Tekutyevsky Cemetery. The media doesn't work that way. It needs to be stirred up first. Interest in the place needs to be aroused. We need to tell residents and tourists why it's valuable and interesting. Only then can we talk about its need for improvement.

Launch of the integrated floating drilling support base. Source: A memorial site for the Tyumen shipyard.

Tekutyevsky Cemetery is the perfect place to explore the history of Tyumen over a specific period. You can visit it, for example, with our guidebook, you grasp several historical layers at once and can put together a general picture of what Tyumen is and what its history is.

Let's say you see—oh, here are the workers of the Tyumen shipyard buried—and you begin to understand that at one point in history, shipping was an important economic sector for Tyumen, something that's not so obvious now. Or you see people who worked during the war. You also grasp that Tyumen was an important rear base in the Great Patriotic War.

The cemetery is an absolutely universal source of information. The lives of the people buried there were touched by virtually every historical event of that era: the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, the Revolution, the Civil War, dispossession, the Great Terror…

A tour of the "We Lived" association at Tekutyevsky Cemetery. Photo from a personal archive.

A guide to the Tekutyevsky Cemetery, created by the "We Lived" association. Photo by Irina Sharova for 72.ru

Marina, dressed as Apollinaria Sheshukova, leads a tour of Tyumen. The photo shows a ritual: people place their palms on the Chiralov merchants' house, popularly known as the "house of happiness." Photo from personal archive.

Tour guides dressed as Agnes Wardropper and Madame Daudel. Photo from the Tyumen Merchant's Wife page. on VKontakte.

Ilya and Marfa Pimenov, 1912. Tyumen resident Marfa Pimenova is one of those buried at Tekutyevsky Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked, but it was found and identified thanks to her great-granddaughter. Source: "We Lived" page on VKontakte.

The Lovers' Bridge over the Tura River is a cable-stayed pedestrian bridge and one of the symbols of Tyumen. Source: KudaTumen, Our Urals.

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When I came to the museum, the young people weren't particularly interested in local history. There was a club called "Regional History Antiquity." I looked at the members—mostly pensioners. They would get together and study various materials.

I was working in PR at the museum and began to understand what people were interested in. For example, Valentine's Day. Of course, there were those opposed to the European holiday, but I suggested to my colleagues that we put together a tour anyway. We'd also tell stories about Tyumen, about its merchants and their wives, but with a different twist.

My colleague Nikolai Drobunin wrote the tour in two weeks, practically without leaving his computer, because he had to gather material, plan a route, work on it, and come up with theatrical characters.
And we got the audience we'd been dreaming of—25-35 year olds, young people. We filled three buses.

Local history is not only about the good and bright

We must tell not only about the beautiful — that Tyumen is developing, that it was a fuel and energy complex in Soviet times, and now it's a hot springs complex, and we're heading toward a bright future. We need to talk about the negative aspects, too.

History of the repressed or other historical layers, heavier for understanding, including those related to state violence, they are presented to a much lesser extent.

In Tyumen, local history and the popularization of history through excursions have developed a specific set of topics: Tyumen merchants, architecture, Tyumen churches, and the Tyumen hinterland. These topics are well researched and arise during outreach events, lectures, and excursions. They are certainly important. And yet, this set is too limited.

Marina Safina as Granny Euphemia on a mystical tour of Tyumen. Photo from her personal archive.

We also did a Halloween tour. I played Granny Euphemia, who has returned from the dead and scolds the young people for driving "chariots" through their Tekutevskoye Cemetery.

I got a call from the regional administration. They said, "Do you understand that masked men will come and shut down all your mayhem?" I explained that there was nothing seditious about it. We weren't taking a bus through cemeteries, we were going through former cemeteries, and this—please!—was Tekutyevsky Boulevard, part of Respubliki Street, and Daudelnaya Street, where the maternity ward is now located.

"The Kolokolnikov Estate Museum is the only surviving classic merchant estate in Tyumen." Source: CityT

Old Believer "Poles" at their spinning wheels. Sibiryachikha village, Soloneshensky District. Source: Altai Old Believer.

In St. Petersburg, Marina Safina wanted to get a job as a conductor at a tram depot—to both earn a living and explore the city…

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There was a year when I went to St. Petersburg and tried my hand at it. I took a tour guide course, but I never got around to it. There are a huge number of tour guides there, and they're all waiting to be given a tour. I contacted travel agencies, museums... I went to the tram depot. I thought, well, I'll just be selling tickets in the morning and exploring the city at the same time. The head of HR looked at me and said, "No, young lady, you'll wake up the first morning and be late the next." He was right; he sensed I was made of something else.

Then I went to the Mikhailovsky Theatre as a controller. For the summer, I got a job at the Zvezda factory as a manager at a children's camp. But I dreamed of excursions.

So I returned to Tyumen to congratulate my dad on his 50th birthday. And I was inundated with calls. The first one was, "Give us a tour." I did, and they left me a tip—as much as I earned in a month in St. Petersburg.

When I started working with the cemetery, I became more interested in my family history. I'd been interested before, but not systematically. But now it's become a full-time passion.

My paternal line is probably the most researched branch of my family. One day, I reached the village where my great-aunt lives. She had kept an archive containing photographs of my ancestors. Their clothing made it clear they were definitely Old Believers.

I don’t know how they ended up in Siberia—whether they went there themselves, away from the sovereign’s eye, or were exiled there, but these people lived on this land for several hundred years, remaining true to their beliefs.

Connection to the past provides support

I realized that here it is, my landWalking the streets of Tyumen, I feel a kind of energy flow, as if a force were lifting me up. This is my hometown, where I'm needed.

I have no reason to hope that I inherited even a small percentage of my ancestors' resilience. But understanding who they were gives me direct physical confirmation that I can dwell on this earthShe is somehow very closely connected to me. I can be here, in alignment with my inner convictions and despite any pressure from the outside world. The history of my ancestors has given me strong internal support. My ancestors are my rear.

A tour of the Tekutyevsky Cemetery. Photo from my personal archive.

People write to us in the comments: "Guys, you are the heroes of our time!" The praise is incredible. But I think I'm doing something natural and normal. Taking an interest in your cultural heritage and preserving it is normal, not some kind of heroic feat. I think it's natural for us to understand what kind of place this is, what kind of city we are in, what its history is, why it looks the way it does now, and what the preconditions and reasons were for it.

…but she returned to her native Tyumen and found her fulfilling career as a tour guide there. Photo from personal archive.

An Old Believer family. The village of Romanovka in Manchuria. 1930s. Photo by Yamazoe Saburo. Source: Altai Old Believer.