A walk through Tomsk or a look from the outside at the rhythm of life of a Russian city in the center of Siberia
Good afternoon, my dear reader! In Siberia, summer is coming soon, warm weather has arrived. I suggest that we take a virtual walk together to Tomsk, walk a little through the streets, see a couple of sights, sit in the park. In general, this is a post-photo gallery, a quick sketch of life in a city in the center of Siberia.
I suggest that you, dear reader, look from the outside at Tomsk and its inhabitants and compare what you will see with your surroundings. Are we very different? Please do not hesitate to comment on this point ;)
Before viewing this photo collection, I recommend reading my brief description of the city of Tomsk, such an article I published in my blog earlier:
So, I’m starting this photo report. We go to Tomsk, look around from the car window.
On our luck, the clouds are leaving the sky, in general, today was a good weather forecast. We are heading towards a new development, to climb one of the high-rises in the morning.
Italian restaurant “The same Parmesan” on Lenin Square, was there once, cappuccino delicious :)
A trolleybus — a budget public transport with electric traction-is moving to the meeting from the hill. The trolleybus system has existed in Tomsk since 1967, that is, for more than 50 years. At the moment, there are 88 units of trolleybus equipment in the Tomsk trolleybus park.
But the photos are quite old models of trolleybuses. Orange in my opinion comes from the beginning of the nineties. Now “new” trolleybuses have been brought to Tomsk from Moscow. Well, not quite new, they were actually written off for disposal in the capital in connection with the renewal of the park. But still, they are actually newer than these cars in the photos. It probably looks reasonable, thrifty. But the sayings about the “caftan from the lord’s shoulder” (from the Old Russian) and donning the old pants of the older brother are popular among the residents of Tomsk :)
In the background, against the background of the second building of Tomsk Polytechnic University, you can see the monument to Kirov. Sergey Mironovich Kirov is one of the most famous revolutionary figures and politicians of Russia and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 20th century. In Tomsk, he began his adult life, worked, and began to take part in revolutionary activities.
As you can see, Russia is quite tolerant of monuments, even if they represent representatives of a controversial and ambiguous time. We consider such monuments to be just a testament to the history and a part of the city’s appearance. We do not destroy monuments, as it has become fashionable to do in other countries. It’s stupid to fight with monuments. When you lose a piece of your history, you lose a piece of yourself.
Tomsk University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics is one of the most respected technical universities in the country.
We are approaching the new high-rise district of Tomsk. In general, there are several of them — Sunflowers, Sunny, Ravine, Mokrushensky, Southern Gate, Green Hills… all of them are basically similar. Tomsk is actively being built up. It will be interesting to compare their condition in twenty years with the current state of the old districts of Tomsk, such as the Irkutsk Tract, which were new buildings before.
I really like these convex glazed balconies with a full-wall view. I would very much like to live in a taconic house, on the balcony I would make a small office for myself and put a computer desk there. :) But alas, I live in a “multi-apartment Khrushchev”, which is 60 years old. In general, it is good, warm, of high-quality brick, but of course you want to dream about a new apartment.
Let’s climb one of the high-rise buildings and look from above.
We can say that this area is located on the outskirts of Tomsk. From the height of the roof of a high-rise building, you can look at the expanses outside the city. Or, for example, consider the central station of the city from the opposite side. I wonder if the sound of moving trains disturbs the residents? My house in Seversk is also located near the railway station, but of course the rhythm of movement is several times quieter and the rare horns of a railway locomotive at night rather create a romantic mood of a traveler for me, when I hear them at all.
In the upper left corner of the photo with the station, from the height of a multi-storey building, you can see the pipes of a thermal power plant. This is GRES2. A thermal power plant in the city center? Somehow this is wild and not right, you may think. May be… But it is, we can say, an active historical object and an interesting history. This thermal power plant began to be built in 1943, at the height of the most terrible and bloody World War II, when the turning point in the course of the fascist invasion of our country had not yet come, when the Red Army at the front and the entire Soviet people in the workplace were gritting their teeth and straining all their strength to fight the fascist hordes. Let me remind you that at the beginning of the war, several factories in Tomsk were completely evacuated and re-launched as soon as possible. The resulting shortage of electricity required the urgent construction of a new thermal power plant, and as close as possible to the factories and the city. Yes, the construction of the power plant was completed only two years later, in May 1945, when the salute of the capture of Berlin and the announcement of the surrender of Nazi Germany had already died down. But electricity was still very much needed to restore the war-torn economy. So, thanks to a combination of extraordinary circumstances, a steam power plant turned out to be in the middle of Tomsk.
Previously, the fuel for the station was only coal, but even under the USSR, the course was taken to transfer the station to gas power.
We return to the historical center of the city, Lenin Street:
This is what a regular shuttle bus in the city looks like. The era of big city buses and minibus-taxis ended shortly after the collapse of the USSR, as state-owned fleets became unprofitable and went bankrupt.
Gas cylinders on the roof — the most common thing. Almost all city passenger buses are converted to gas for economy.
We will go a little further to the City Park, see how people relax.
Park, alley, children’s attractions, Ferris wheel, petting zoo, “Alley of Fairy Tales” with figures of the heroes of popular Soviet cartoons and Russian fairy tales.
The heroes of probably the most popular Soviet animated film “Well, wait!” about the adventures of a bully wolf and a good hare. On this bench, too, someone is constantly photographed, both children and adults-all people who lived under the USSR adored this cartoon. It is rare to catch this bench empty in the frame.
If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you watch this multi-part cartoon at the link:
Perhaps this cartoon may even shock you in some ways…
And this is a character from the old Russian fairy tale “By the Pike’s Desire” Emelya, riding on a Russian stove:
And the characters of good Soviet cartoons “Doctor Aibolit” and “ Cat Leopold”:
Take a walk in the city center along the embankment of the Tom River.
This is the end of the embankment. then you can see the industrial area. Some unconscious citizens admiring the views from the embankment left two bottles of beer on the asphalt… Well, thank you. that they didn’t break it. And the trash can is only twenty meters away :(
On the shore you can see a person who decided to sunbathe in the warm spring sun. A real Siberian! In general, of course, this is somehow too bold for me, still spring, periodically blows a cold breeze. On the street, sometimes you can still meet people in jackets. No wonder he was alone on the beach. The swimming season starts here in a month.
Perhaps the most favorite monument in the city of Tomsk is the monument to the writer Chekhov. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in 1890, on his way to Sakhalin, visited Tomsk, took a walk around the city and he did not like it very much. Already being in Krasnoyarsk he wrote about the Tomsk he visited far from the most rosy colors:
“Tomsk is not worth a copper penny. The most boring city, and the people here are the most boring. The city is drunk, the lawlessness is Asian. The dirt is not dirty, but there are also the beginnings of civilization-at the inn, the maid, handing me a spoon, wiped it on ass. The dinners here are excellent, unlike the women, who are hard to the touch. I was sorry that the university was opened in Tomsk, and not here, in Krasnoyarsk. “(and further in the text the memory of the audience of the deputy chief police officer of Tomsk, a passionate book lover, about a joint visit to Tomsk brothels and other bad memories).
Grateful residents of Tomsk for this text erected a monument to him with a special text:
“This is Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in Tomsk through the eyes of a drunken peasant lying in a ditch and not reading “Kashtanka”.
Meaningful, subtle humor!
It’s time to delve into the history and appreciate the hallmark of the city — the wooden architecture of Tomsk. One of the brightest surviving representatives of which is the Estate of the merchant of the second guild Leontius Zhelyabo.
Leonty Zhelyabo was a well-to-do merchant, and there were many servants in his estate. In general, it was originally a manor complex of buildings and a bright yellow house with carved firebirds (fairy-tale characters of Slavic mythology) — just one of them, the last one, completed in 1903. It was a wedding gift for the merchant’s daughter Varvara. And the estate complex itself began to be built in 1896.
A little more old streets of Tomsk:
The Resurrection Church is almost the same age as Tomsk. The original wooden church was built in 1622 and was located east of the current stone one, on the territory of the Holy Dormition Monastery. Soon, in 1626, the monastery was closed, and the Resurrection Church became a parish.
In general, guests of the city rarely visit the Tatar Settlement and the historical monuments of this area of Tomsk are little known. For example, the House of the merchant Khamitov Mukhamed Karim, which was built in 1905 (the author of the project and the builder are unknown). During the Russian-Japanese war of 1904–1905, K. Khamitov supplied horses for Tsyavlovsky and built a house with the money acquired at that time. The building is an interesting example of a rich merchant’s house, whose architecture combines the stylistic forms of classicism, Renaissance and Art Nouveau.
Theater Square. We can say that this is the cultural center of the city. The maximum concentration of stage venues, cinemas, and museums around. But once we delve into the historical moments, then for the Theater Square, you can remember this story:
During the First Russian Revolution, the territory of the modern square was the site of many stormy events. So here, on January 18, 1905, during a demonstration of a group of young people under anti-monarchist and radical socialist slogans, a young printing worker, radical Marxist Joseph Kononov, who was carrying the revolutionary Red banner, tragically died from an accidental shot by an unidentified person (the young revolutionaries had revolvers, the police and the Cossacks were armed only with whips and regular sabers that day). The event stirred up the whole city, the liberal Duma members and the general public were quick to blame the incident on “unreasonably harsh actions of the police and the Cossacks” and this predetermined the revolutionary fever in the city for the whole of 1905. The funeral of Joseph Kononov at the city’s main Preobrazhensky Cemetery resulted in a massive anti-government demonstration, and later his name became an iconic symbol of the Revolution for Tomsk. During the liquidation of the Preobrazhensky Cemetery in Tomsk in 1953–1955, the revolutionary’s ashes were reburied in the square near the Theater, and a monument with a symbolic cast-iron funeral bowl on top was reinstalled on the grave.
What does this story tell us? Well, the technique of color revolutions is far from new. The Maidan was not invented by the Ukrainians, the same technology of fake shooting of protesters by provocateurs and the accusation of the authorities. The bourgeois-liberal (namely, the liberal bourgeoisie was at the origin of the revolutions in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, if you are at least superficially familiar with History) forces are the same in any part of the planet, as they say: “nothing personal, it’s just business.”
Some more old houses of Tomsk:
There is such a sculpture in our city, depicting a lover hanging on a balcony. The situation is dramatic, the hapless man is about to break and fall, and how many floors he will fly down, it’s just as lucky. Such a funny and vital miniature of an unlucky lover can be seen in Tomsk in the window of the museum on the Resurrection Mountain. The museum staff turned out to be inventive people with a sense of humor. They periodically sew and change new shorts parachutes to the glorious hero lover, the color of which is not repeated.
Resurrection Mountain — the heart of Tomsk, it was here in 1604 that the Cossacks, sent by Boris Godunov from Surgut and Tobolsk, founded the Tomsk prison. Resurrection Mountain is a place to visit almost any sightseeing tour of Tomsk, so we should not pass by.
The Tomsk prison was founded on the southern promontory of the Resurrection Mountain, of course it was wooden and has not survived to our time. But in 2004, for the 400th anniversary of the city, part of the prison was restored. At the moment, the Resurrection Mountain is a historical monument of federal significance.
Well, we will finish our long walk in Tomsk in front of the main entrance to Tomsk State University.
My dear reader. thank you for your attention. To avoid accusations of any fraud and the desire to show only the beauty, and some shortcomings to hide, I immediately remind you that our walk was in the new areas and the city center, which are a priori cleaner than some old areas. At the beginning of this post, I gave a link to a general overview of the city of Tomsk, where I tried to show how different parts of the city look like. And this is a normal state of affairs, don’t you agree? For example, when I arrived in Rome, the capital of Italy, I left the central exit of the Termini station on a nice clean square, but as soon as I walked around the station from behind, I immediately came across piles of garbage and homeless people lying along the back wall of the station. That’s life. So today we just went to new neighborhoods and popular vacation spots, without any secret intent.
Please leave your opinion about this format of entries in the comments to the article or write to me by email about the topics that you would like to learn!
