The city in Vyatka has its own laws, its own orders. Vyatka has its own rules What awaits you

Few of the modern black-and-white photographers God gave to see the LIGHT SO as Alexei Myakishev sees it. His characters are shrouded in light and shine from within, as if their SOULS appear in the photographs. The secret is simple - this is the author's gaze, woven out of love and sympathy for people who, by the will of a CHANCE, get into the frame. They are imbued with all the creativity of the Vyatka-Moscow photographer Myakishev. He left his native places and hometown long ago, but the connection with them does not interrupt, it remained at a deep level - on the line of the soul and heart.

A little more time will pass, and we will judge Vyatka of the 90s of the last century by the photographs of Alexei, which, collected together in one album, make up the epic poem of the Vyatka Territory - Vyatka and the entire Kirov region. I am sure we will closely peer into faces, examine clothes and household items in order to imagine and understand how people lived at the turn of the century.

Alexey has been filming the everyday life of ordinary people for almost twenty years. Life in all its manifestations and unpretentious plots. But in almost every photograph of him there is some kind of understatement, intrigue, nerve. There is a special Vyatka intonation filled with irony. There is drama and telling details that refer the viewer to the paintings of the great everyday painters - the masters of the golden age of Dutch painting: Jan Vermeer and Peter Bruegel the Elder.

We, the Vyatka, are the Hravans: we do not fall from the floor. We, the Vyatka people, are Hrappish people, seven to one - we are not afraid of anyone. The Vyatskys are Grab guys: they are dragging a cow to the bathhouse, grass has sprouted on the roof, and they are reluctant to mow. Vyatka has its own rules. Vyatka is a womb to all wealth. These and similar proverbs and sayings about the people of the Vyatka region are recalled when you look at the photographs of Alexei Myakishev.

Kirov region, Karinka, 1994. The wedding procession approached the fence. Bumped into a group of other people. The groom is smiling, the bride is tense, in her hands is a bag of money. But why is there a man with a cunning face and a rolled-up mattress on his shoulder, reinforcing the barricade of confrontation? Why did the young man from the right group cover his mouth with his hand, as if in surprise? The girl from the left group is gnawing on something in thought. Who is this sad-faced woman who created tension? What is being explained to everyone by a man who turns his back to us and faces the audience? Why is the bridesmaid's face like that, as if there, behind the fence, universal sadness? What is the groom's friend trying to explain? Strained faces, difficult situation. Cinema, and nothing more. A church in the background, houses, a rickety fence, a haystack and an antediluvian white bus are perceived as the scenery for a film about provincial life.

Kirov region, Belaya, 1995. A woman who looked like a village school teacher, wearing glasses and a hairdo from the 50s, lowered her head and hugged a girl with a ridiculous white bow on her head. Behind her is the old Moskvich-IZH-Kombi, which has seen its sights. One of the boys is trying to climb on it, the other, clearly older, has turned to the fence. On the fence there are boots, it looks like the mud is impassable here in the off-season. Something happened, happened. We don't know what exactly, but why is it so sad?

Kirov region, Oparino, 1997. Scene on the village street. The two women are talking animatedly. The woman on the left put the bag down on the ground. She is in a light chintz dress and slippers. The one on the right, in rubber boots and a shabby men's jacket - clearly from the field - clings tightly to the handle of the stroller, on which

intricate bale shape. It looks like hay or straw. Behind the women is an abandoned building with skeletons of letters and broken glass - the former “Products” store, a two-storey barrack-type house with a dark hole in the door, an antenna cross and a square “ear” of the attic. A woman with a can is walking by, and another, all in dark, walks through the door of the house, creating, together with the speakers, a compositional triangle that deepens the space. Here, every figure is in place, even a couple of either drawn or live pigeons on a gray wall.

The unpretentiousness, unreasonableness of the plots, their genuine documentary character is emphasized by strict informational captions to the photographs. They contain only the place and year of shooting. The author does not impose anything on the viewer. He just shows life as it is.

Natalia Udartseva

My city is special, Kirov is not a province! It is a small, but cozy and distinctive city, a city that has a soul. As we say, "Vyatka - Hravsky!" It is also the historical, cultural, industrial and scientific center of the Urals and, in addition, the birthplace of the Dymkovo toys. Welcome to Vyatka land!

Duration

It is possible with children

What awaits you

Acquaintance with Kirov
Kirov-Vyatka-Khlynov is provincial and original, cozy and dear. During the walk you will learn how many times the city has changed its name, why Kirov is called “the city on seven hills” and “the city of exiles”. We will talk about the famous natives and residents of Vyatka. I will tell you about the famous Vyatka crafts and how the brand of “Vyatka goods” is developing today.

Historic city center
On a walk through the central part of the city you will see the old Vyatka, walk along the Green embankment, Alexander Garden, walk along Vyatsky Arbat. I will introduce you to the architectural heritage of the city, as well as to modern monuments. You will see the monument "Peter and Fevronier" in the Alexander Garden and the composition "Meeting Place" on Spasskaya Street. And you can also make a wish at the "Tree of Wishes" on Teatralnaya Square.

Organizational details

• The tour is completely pedestrian.
• There are no additional expenses during the walk.

Book an excursion on any of the available days in the calendar

• This is an individual excursion, the guide will conduct it for you and your company.
• On the site you pay 23% of the cost, and the rest of the money - to the guide on the spot. You can

Finally, I got around to writing about the city in which we now live. When the locals hear that we have moved from Moscow to Kirov, they make such round eyes. They see Moscow as a paradise on earth, and they have no idea how much their cute green town is more comfortable and more pleasant for life than the gas-polluted and always stuck in a traffic jam capital. When I first came to Kirov two years ago, I also did not share my future husband's enthusiasm for this city. A city as a city is certainly not the best city on earth. But now my attitude towards Kirov has changed somewhat. In general, there is no average city, just as it is impossible to measure the average temperature in a hospital. Each city has its own characteristics. And in Kirov they are quite bright and sometimes very, very pleasant.

Kirov stands on the high bank of the Vyatka River. Vyatka is wide enough, but shallow and not navigable. The opposite shore is sandy, and there is a beach there, where there are always a lot of people in the heat, despite the fact that the sanitary and epidemiological station annually reports that water samples showed it unsuitable for swimming.

On the city embankment, named after Alexander Grin, who once lived in Vyatka, there rises an elegant rotunda of the 19th century, which offers a beautiful view of the river. Vyatka and to the opposite bank.

And on the opposite bank is the Zarechny Park, which, in fact, is more a forest than a park. Here you can admire the beautiful Vyatka nature, practically without leaving the city.

Well, isn't it here that V. M. Vasnetsov painted his "Alyonushka"? It is not surprising that the Vyatka lands gave birth to so many outstanding artists.

In the Zarechny Park there is an oxbow of Vyatka, and the area on the right bank is swampy, in the spring everything is flooded so that it is impossible to get to the park.

The most interesting thing is that just in the flood zone is the Dymkovo settlement, where the famous Dymkovo toy appeared. How people live with water in yards in spring is incomprehensible. But Kirov is rightfully proud of the product of craftsmen from across the river, and everywhere in the city there are reminders of traditional folk craft in the form of various design elements in the style of Dymkovo toys. On Komsomolskaya Street, not far from the station, they even painted houses in a haze. This is very correct, the city must remember its traditions.

The city remembers not only its traditions, but also its famous residents: the already mentioned Alexander Green is immortalized not only on the embankment, but also in the Kirov Park: there everything runs along the waves of the bronze Frezi Grant.

In general, I really like this park: it is large, well-groomed and contains entertainment for every taste: attractions, quiet green alleys for walks, and ponds where you can ride catamarans.

And in winter, city dwellers start skiing together: they can even be skied in parks within the city limits. And on the central Teatralnaya square, they put ice figures and construct slides for skating. Winter is always frosty and snowy, the thermometer sometimes drops to -33 degrees, but this does not frighten the locals at all. It will be necessary for me to take an example from them.

In Kirov there are all sorts of fashionable European things, which have not yet reached Moscow. For example, separate garbage collection. In EVERY courtyard of the city there are ordinary containers for garbage and necessarily one container for plastic bottles and one for paper. I don't know if plastic and paper are actually recycled, but I really want to believe it. A separate bag for paper waste has now settled in our kitchen, and we strictly take it into the appropriate container.

There are also many bicycle parking lots in the city. They are in front of every museum and other socially significant institutions. Another question is that there are no bike paths at all. But there really are cyclists, they still successfully ride on sidewalks, on which, of course, there is not such a dense flow of pedestrians as in Moscow. For sports enthusiasts, outdoor exercise machines are installed in parks and some courtyards, which is also very nice.

On the historic buildings there are plates with QR codes, by clicking on which you can find out detailed information about the building. It's nice, of course, that Kirov is in trend, but I'm personally against QR codes: firstly, I don't have a smartphone, and I'm never going to start it. I am more than sure that half of the city's population also does not have a smartphone: after all, the residents of Kirov are not only advanced young people in terms of gadgets, but also elderly people and the same retrogrades like Dima and I. And secondly, the area of ​​the plates allows, instead of drawing a huge square, to print all the necessary information about the building: when it was built, who is the architect, what style and brief history. Nobody else will read it anymore. And the code still needs to be read, the page loaded ...

There are plenty of old and at the same time very beautiful buildings in the city. Vyatka was inhabited mainly by merchants who strove to build outstanding houses for themselves. What is one house of the merchant Bulychev with an asymmetric tower worth?

In the center of the city, there are antique-style signs, such as those on the pedestrian Spasskaya Street.

We even found a braille information board for visually impaired people. It is located next to the Tourist Information Center, of which we found at least two. But for some reason they don't work on Saturday and Sunday - I wonder when else to travel? Or do the authorities hope that someone will come to Kirov for the whole vacation?

There are also many beautiful old churches. Kirov has a rich religious history: from time immemorial, the Velikoretsky religious procession has been held, and one of the main attractions of the city is the Trifonov Monastery, founded by the locally revered Saint Tryphon of Vyatka. But we must not forget about the multinational composition of the population of the former Vyatka. There is a Catholic church in the city, which, however, now does not function as a church, but is a concert hall where you can listen to, among other things, the organ.

There is also a mosque of the early 20th century; it resumed its work in 1996.

Historian and great enthusiast Anton Kasanov tells the townspeople about this and many other ancient buildings and other attractions. kasanof , who together with Stas Suvorov suvorovus organized and spends every summer incredibly interesting and very informative excursions-walks "

- I definitely like him, I said, - leaving the station, his operator Seryoga.
- What do you mean! Kirov is a link! And our country is a mask show, - the granny nervously reacted running by.
Kirov always leaves strange impressions, but whatever they are, in the end they turn out to be positive. After all, it is not for nothing that they say that the Vyatka people are Grab guys.
- You must understand, here you are in your Moscow ...
- In the bottom!
- What's the difference! You are all running, you are all tense, but here we are! Nobody is in a hurry, but everyone walks and smiles., - a local operator once told me.
And after all, damn it, this city really shines with smiles, even if there is absolutely nothing in it, but the people here are special. Soulful. But in the link there is no other way. You can't survive here without a smile. Let's run through the city with a smile?

01. Kirov is a rather poor town, but here no one is ashamed of it. So what - but real

02. Main square of the city

03. And traditional Lenin on guard of the interests of the administration
- And who is your governor, - I asked the horse distributor
- There was Medvedev, but they jailed him.
- What???
- Well, this one, like him, Belykh. They planted it in general, but I don't know who now,- answered the driver

04. Lions have been spotted in the city

05. And the house of high culture of everyday life, although high - this is definitely not about Kirov. He is quite squat

06. Vyatka flows calmly and unhurriedly. The city changed its name several times: first there was Khlynov, then Vyatka, then Kirov.

07. Vyatka flows calmly and unhurriedly. The city changed its name several times: first there was Khlynov, then Vyatka, then Kirov.

08. Of course, the main embankment of the city is named after him

09. Rotunda, in which Alexander I rested. The statesmen, by the way, Kirov did not particularly favor with their attention

10. The road to Syktyvkar

11. Medvedev was remembered for a reason - he is a local celebrity here - he became the first ruler who visited Kirov for many, many years

12. The local pond grows with ducks

13. And a new guest appeared on the shore

14. The city is growing and developing, although not very noticeably

15. Interestingly, the new governor dropped his ass on the suitcase?

Photo: Alexey Navalny after the meeting of the city court of Kirov

On Wednesday, April 17, the trial of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his friend Pyotr Ofitserov began in Kirov. They are charged with embezzlement on an especially large scale and - theoretically - could receive up to ten years in prison. An unprecedented landing of journalists and supporters of Navalny from Moscow and a dozen other Russian cities arrived in Kirov. But all that happened on the 17th was a 45-minute court session, which postponed the trial for a week.

Train # 32 Moscow-Kirov, which departed on April 16 from the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow, was two-thirds filled with journalists, oppositionists and supporters of Alexei Navalny. In the vestibule, over a smoke break, the last words were scolded by the leaders of Yabloko, Sergei Mitrokhin and Grigory Yavlinsky, for the fact that in 2011 they were afraid to nominate Navalny for the presidency. A neighbor in the carriage, an architect, told me that she took a day off and went to Kirov - not in order to get to court, but just like that. Almost all types from Bolotnaya Square were represented here: from a woman dismissed from a politically correct office for participating in rallies, to young men who had just coordinated in social networks and went to Kirov to participate in their first demonstration. The few residents of Kirov on the train tried to be modest.

The restaurant car was reminiscent of the Jean-Jacques cafe, fashionable among the capital's opposition. State Duma Deputy Dmitry Gudkov condescendingly spoke about the senior comrades in the legislative assembly and said that his father Gennady Gudkov was expelled from the State Duma absolutely illegally. We looked into the dining car and Navalny with his wife Yulia. Navalny merrily threw jokes with the audience. And I must admit: the defendant, whose difficult trial will begin in the morning, behaved excellently.

The train stopped for two minutes in Kovrov - this is the Vladimir region. A man approached the vestibule and pressed a handwritten poster "Alexey and Julia, we are with you" against the glass. The man held this poster until the train started.

Two girls entered the dining car to see the light. “They are lawyers, they are going with me in the next compartment,” Navalny recommended them. The girls said that they themselves are from Kirov, but study at the law faculty of Moscow State University. They said that they had read the indictment on "Kirovles" and it terrified them. They even said that they considered this case at a university seminar and are now preparing a petition in defense of Navalny on behalf of students and teachers. The girls were encouraged sympathetically.

In the morning, opposition activists recognized them as Lifenews journalists.

Around midnight, alarming news came in that in Kirov, near the Leninsky court building, journalists were already lining up - and that there were dozens of them there. The news was only slightly exaggerated. At eight in the morning, at least one and a half hundred journalists from all over the world stood at the entrance to the court, while the largest courtroom could hold no more than 70 people. However, on the whole, the situation was much more cultured than at the resonant processes in the capital. The bailiffs were even excessively polite, the chairman of the court, Konstantin Zaitsev, came down to the journalists and explained that he could not let all people in for reasons of fire and other safety.

"Organize an audio broadcast!" - asked one of the foreigners. The president of the court, it seemed, did not even understand what he was asked about. “The building was built in the 18th century, and since then, little has changed here,” local correspondents explained to the foreigner. Those who did not fit into the hall went to a restaurant opposite the court, which was switched to a round-the-clock operating mode due to the invasion of guests. There they tried to watch a live broadcast from the conference room.

However, the meeting itself lasted about 45 minutes, and Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova was the soloist. She filed a motion to postpone the trial for a month. Firstly, because another lawyer for Navalny from Kirov, Sergei Kobelev, is involved in the case. Secondly, because 29 volumes of materials from the criminal case is a sly figure. There are volumes in which the text is printed on both sides of the page, in some cases there are mistakes and inaccuracies in the page numbering - and therefore it takes time to figure it out. Navalny and trying to attract as little attention as possible of the Officers agreed with the petition; The state prosecutor was against, he very quietly said that the time from November 25, 2012 to March 15, 2013 was enough to get acquainted with the case. Judge Sergei Blinov spoke even more quietly, but partially granted the petition and postponed the hearing, only not for a month, but for a week - until April 24.

The trial ended even before the rally in support of Navalny. The action took place in the immediate vicinity of the court and gathered a couple of hundred people. Mostly newcomers; residents of Kirov watched from afar. At the stand, there were mixed copies of payments made by VLC "Kirovles" (with their help, the prosecution will try to prove the theft, while Navalny and Officers and lawyers are diametrically opposed) and posters testifying to the theft at Gunvor and Transneft - so that viewers could feel the difference, apparently ... People came to Kirov from Tatarstan, Izhevsk, Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh. There were also several opponents of Navalny. They shouted that the thief should be in jail, and that was all.

The co-chairman of Parnas, Boris Nemtsov, who arrived in Kirov the day before, compared Navalny's case with the Khodorkovsky case. He said that the day before he had met with the governor of the region, Nikita Belykh. “Belykh does not hide his attitude to this matter. But he works for Putin, where to go, ”Nemtsov complained.

After the trial, a crowd of about 200 people marched to Orlovskaya Street, where Navalny's headquarters is located. This office space is approximately 100 square meters. Several tables, office equipment, many sockets, the password for wi-fi is "navalny2018". “Either he will become president this year, or will be released from prison,” the activists joked. Navalny once again apologized for pulling so many people out of their cities - and just for the sake of a 45-minute trial, which almost no one got to.

Activists Nikolai Lyaskin and Georgy Alburov gathered people and went to organize "Astrakhan-2". That is, walking around Kirov and handing out leaflets of anti-Putin, mainly, content. The opposition carried out the same operation a year ago in Astrakhan during the hunger strike of Oleg Shein, who lost the mayoral elections there. It didn't work out very well this time. “People, of course, rush, take leaflets. But so that straight "you are great, we are for you with all our hearts" - this was not ", - Lyaskin complained later.

And in general, during the day the impression was that the residents of Kirov - from ordinary people to high-ranking ones - are trying to stay away from this case (if they know about it at all). “If it were not for the federal media, few people here would know about Navalny,” the journalists of the Kirov-based “Echo of Moscow” told me. - Even when he worked here, he was a non-public person. I was only at the inauguration of Belykh. And he left pretty quickly. In other words, Navalny is even less famous in Kirov than in other cities of Russia. " The local Echo journalists also said that they noticed some high-ranking officials of the regional government and deputies at the Leninsky court. But they preferred to watch the courthouse aside and leave.

“In general, the main ***** in the Kirovles case is its former director Opalev,” the head of one of the departments of the regional government told me, who asked not to indicate his name. - That's really who the thief who should be in prison. Together with the previous governor, they came up with such corruption schemes that five Navalny would not be enough to clean it up. " Having already received his term, Opalev, according to the official, lives in his "built on honest income" house - and from there he tries not to leave once again. “I didn’t read carefully the documents on the case, I can admit that there were some abuses. And I want to say that the majority of residents of Kirov adhere to the same opinion, to whom the name Navalny says something, ”the official says.

One of these residents of Kirov, the governor of Belykh, even wrote a special post in LiveJournal for those who are in Kirov for the first time. “I feel responsible for how many guests will see our city. Let the main purpose of the visit is far from acquaintance with Kirov, its history and culture. But nevertheless, I am sure that media representatives, public activists will still want to get to know the territory better, assess the socio-political situation, especially since it is often in the center of attention, including at the federal level, "wrote the governor, whose last name appears in the indictment - the parties in the court will almost certainly call him as a witness.

Meanwhile, at Navalny's headquarters, lawyer Olga Mikhailova was giving a short briefing. She recalled that on April 23, the day before the new session in the Leninsky court, the Kirov regional court will already consider Navalny's complaint about procedural and other violations contained in the materials of the criminal case. Mikhailova optimistically noted that if the regional court directs the case for further investigation to the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia, then the session of the Leninsky Court on the 24th may not take place at all.

The briefing ended, activists who settled in the headquarters discussed past detentions, color revolutions and the question of where to get money for a trip to Kirov on April 24.