Bisk - City for every taste
Why don't you know that right away? There is no advertising on the streets of the old city. No posters, no shields. This city gently accepts a guest into its arms and does not impose on him necessarily something to eat, buy, win, take part. To get to this part of the city from the station or bus station, you need to go through a noisy square with obsessive callers, taxi drivers, bypass the shopping arcades, and go to Merlin Street. There, take the tram after a few stops, you will notice that the world around you will change.
Tomsk region is known for its cities with a rich history and one of them is Biysk. There's almost nowhere to go to eat. A merchant’s mansion – a tavern with a predictable name “Kalina Red”, and a cafe “Randevu” with paintings of various rendezvous on the walls of a tiny hall and even in the toilet – that’s all the catering services. So it is better to forget about daily bread for a while and go straight down Soviet Street, which will lead you to the church. The charm of ancient temples is genuine, going into the temple you will immediately feel that it is not the same as in new churches.
The city of Biysk differs from others in the Tomsk province with a large number of Orthodox churches. All of them are kept in exemplary order and are revered by local residents, wrote Swiss salesman Schroeder, who lived in Biysk for two years in 1896. The Assumption Cathedral on Sovetskaya Street is the youngest of Biysky temples, it was built in 1899-1902. In the history of Biysk there were three Assumption Churches. The first wooden was built in 1774, stone - in 1789. The wooden church was dismantled when, according to the decree of Nicholas I, the districts of Biysk were replanned “in order to give them proper geometric regularity.” The second Assumption Church was destroyed in 1928. Then the museum department of Glavnauka recognized this church as an architectural monument, but the leadership of the Biy Gorkomkhoz appealed to the same museum department with a request "to allow the demolition of the temple in order to save people's funds." The commission worked for two years and decided to break it!
In the third Assumption Cathedral, which reached us, after Christmas is not crowded. A decorated tree in the middle, light pours into the narrow windows. The walls here breathe grace and tranquility. As soon as you cross the threshold of the temple, you will feel peace. The vanity will turn away from you and you will plunge into another world, smelling of palm and wax. If you are not hungry, you can go to the bridge over Biya. Near the bridge there is a brick mansion, similar to a toy: the Bianchi Museum. The famous children's writer Vitaly Bianchi lived in Biysk for four years - from 1918 to 1922. He began writing after leaving Biysk for Petrograd, but the museum bears his name. In the "corner of Bianchi" there is a narrow cabinet resembling kitchen "penalties" - in it the future author of the "forest newspaper" kept his belongings. On the wall next to the pictures of the hero and his wife is a portrait of an amazingly beautiful Chinese woman, the translator of Bianca’s fairy tales into Chinese. This girl and Vitaly Bianki were friends, despite the age difference, and the translator herself sometimes called herself in the Russian manner, by name and patronymic, and her patronymic was Vitalievna! What is not the idea for the series: the Chinese daughter of a famous Soviet writer? Especially since the history has not preserved the details.
Just next to the museum is a yellow and white building, light and slim. This is an architectural monument of the early twentieth century – the Bisky Drama Theatre. The building of the theater was built at the beginning of the last century by a merchant with money bequeathed for this purpose by his father. Imagination draws the plot for another series - about a poor actress and fatal love. In general, there are many such stories in the history of Biysk, and there is no need to invent them.
And the streets are circling, you can wander along them for a long time without getting tired - their drawing is natural, like any city that expanded as needed, and not according to plans for the development of new neighborhoods. There are quite a few people on the streets, and those who meet move slowly and watch independently, as do the local dogs. They are sociable, they look at you with great attention.
Tram tracks zigzag the snowy perspective of the streets and rest on the slope. There is an old cemetery there. It buried exiles and evacuees. In his land rested the ashes of Gunter Türk, Muscovite, Tolstoy, poet, whose fate surprisingly linked Biysk with the capital of Russia and the capital of Siberia.
Gunther Turk was born in Moscow, believed in the ideas of Tolstoyism, left in the 30s near Novokuznetsk, to work on land as a commune. And write poetry. There was collectivization. The Communards were arrested very quickly. In prison, Turk wrote down poems - what he would get, even on chips. One such chip comrade Turka saved, even passing through the stage. After prison and camps, Gunter was exiled to Biysk. Where he soon died, a sick and broken man, although he wrote at that time "... to murmur for life - what a crime!" To feel sorry for yourself is nonsense.
And his poems came half a century later in Novosibirsk in the hands of Julia Villievna Likhacheva, a connoisseur of poetry. Her poetry evenings dedicated to her favorite poets are well known in Novosibirsk. So the poet Turk finally got a happy lot, albeit posthumously. Likhacheva was able to find funds for and publish a book of poems by Turk. Literary scholars talked about the book. And in Biysk there was a memorial plaque in memory of the poet.
Perhaps the house where he lived in Biysk Turk with his wife, ten years waiting for him from the camps, is somewhere nearby in safety. If you are still hungry and tired of the silence, then forget about Merlin Street and go by heated tram to Vasilyev Street. There is everything as you are used to: pizzerias and supermarkets, boutiques and fashionable pharmacies. So Biysk is a city for every taste. He is both old and new, in a hurry and calm. Come and see everything with your own eyes.
Author: Elena Klimova
article from the website: rostur.ru