Kazan-The upper town

The Upper Town

The trading quarter in earlier centuries began at the square where the memorial to Musa Dzhalil stands, at the geometrical centre of Kazan. Besides the City Council (Duma), here were located the trading rows and stalls, the Gostiny Dvor and the Alexcander Arcade. Goods from all over the Russian Empire and the world were brought here, up the steep slope from the Bulak Canal, which was navigable, escpecially at high water, until earlier this century. One looks in vain for Tatar features in this part of the city : enchanted Kazan in the last century impressed visitors with grandiose architecture modelled on central Russian cities. With good reason a visiting Russian writer noted in 1800: "I don't know why they call Moscow the Tatar Rome; it would be much more just and true to call Kazan the Tatar Moscow...". The Englishmann Helmersen in 1833, even after terrible fire of 1815 which had destroyed half of the city, considered that Kazan "undoubtedly falls among the best built cities in Russia". The memory of those times is preserved in the old names of houses on Lenin Street, formerly Voskresenskaya, which leads from the Spassky Tower in the Kremlin to the famous Kazan University.

The main block of the University, with three classical portals along its white facade, was built in 1822 and incorporated the old building of the First Boy s' Gymnasium and the private residence of the Prince Tenichev, given to the University at the time of its foundation. Between 1832 and 1841, under the supervision of the architect M. Korinfsky, the rest of the buildings of the university campus were added to those that been donated. The new buildings, which included the anatomy theatre, the library, the chemistry and physics laboratories and the observatory, completed the university complex and gave it its neo-classical appearance.

In addition to the Kremlin and Kazan University, the upper part of the town has a series of remarkably fine buildings from the last century, each with its own character and history. Their inventive architecture displays the most diverse elements from the mannered grace of Italian baroque and the refiniment of ancient Greek orders to the Moorich languor that envelops the residences of the nobility and rich merchants. Here, too, the traditional Tatar stone-carving appears unexpectedly in the bas reliefs of the provincial capital.

Kazan is a mirage, a fata morgana, a bewitched, sacred and beautiful city. It is also an encyclopaedia of Tatar and Russian history and culture: almost every house in the old city could tell a story or even a whole epic peopled by historical characters and the many generations who have dwelt there. Opposite the University, on the square with the bust of Lobachevsky, stands a building which immediately attracts attention by its ornately decorated facade and corner balcony. This is the National Library, the proud rival of Kazan University Library.The grand mansion which houses the reeding rooms, catalogues and stoore-roomsfor two million books was built in 1908, under the supervision of the architect K. Mufke, for the merchant and indus trialist P.Ushkov. It later passed into the hands of his sister, Zinaida Ushkova, hence its name, the Ushkova House. The nucleus of the National Library was formed from the Kazan City Public Library, which owed its origins to the noted bibliophile I.A. Vtorov, who in 1844 donated his priceless collection of books to the city. These where kept in one of the rooms of the Nobles' Club until 1864, when the public library was opened in the building of the City Council, by the Spassky Tower of the Kazan Kremlin. Its collection was augmented by donations of books from Kazan University, the Russian Historical Society and many private individuals.

In 1906, a branch of the public library was opened in Kazan for Muslims, that is, the Tatar population of the city, but before 1913 only men could use it. It is remarkable that early as 1905 the Kazan Tatar women made an application to the City Duma , requesting the right to use the public library, but permission was not granted until eight years later. In 1919 the very valuable book collection of the National Library was housed in the Ushkova House, whouse external grandeur is matched by the beauty of its furnishings. In the interior, Chinese painted dragons combine to create a harmoniouse, quasi oriental atmosphere. The light filters through stained-glass windows onto the floor laid with Japanese cherry wood and stone intarsia. The Ceremonial Room of the library, in the triumphant Empire stile, displays a ceiling painted with winged lions and horses, and doors with high reliefs of eagles. From there a series of rooms leads to the Moorish Room, its doors decorated with Arabic calligraphy. The winter garden, adjacent to the Ceremonial Room, is like a grotto with stalactites made of natural rock. This readings room, known as the Grotto, is perhaps the most famous feature of the Ushkova House, which also has rooms panelled in seasoned oak, rooms in the rococo style, painted doors and walls, marble fireplaces surmounted by mirrors, ceilings with landscapes and vignettes, bronze sculptures...

The rarities in the library collection In fact, it is not only a very important library, but a real museum. Among the rarities in the library collection are editions published in their lifetime of works by M.V. Lomonosov, the historian N.M. Karamzin and Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, first edit ions of Pushkin's Yevgeny Onegin (1833) and Poems (1829), and first editions of long poems and other poetry of the genius of Tatar literature, Gabdulla Tukay. The library collection also has the most valuable editions of Tatar educators, writers and historiancs, including the works of the K.Nasyri, F. Amirkhan, G. Ibragimov and Kh. Atlasi.

In the 130 years since the foundation of the National Library of the Tatarstan, coutless people have visited its magnificient rooms and famous Grotto, and much has changed in Kazan. Stormy times alternated with more peaceful periods. The rich mercha nt class, aristocrats and gentry of Kazan disappeared, and the upper town no longer belonged exclusively to the Russians. Originally quite separate, the Russian and Tatar cultures began by degreesand reluctantly to blend, remaining themselves but at the s ame time creating something new, which has given Kazan inimitable atmosphere.

The buildings that flanks the square at right angles to the Ushkova House could also tell a tale of the changing epochs in the life of the city. Erected in 1880 for the Kseninskaya Girls' Gymnasium, it later housed the adult education centre known a s the Workers' Faculty, where the poet Musa Dzhalil studied from 1923 to 1925. Since 1945, the building has been the home of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, wich includes the physics, technical and biological institutes, the institute of organic and physical chemistry named after Academician A. Arbuzov, and the institute of Tatar language, literature and history bearing the name of G. Ibragimov. Parallel with this building, acros the street, stands the chemistry block of the University, built in 1954 by the students themselves on the site of the old Voskresenskaya Church, which once gave its name to the aristocratic Voskresenskaya Street.

Kazan's buildings are especially eloquent at down, when the light breeze from the Volga quietly rustles the leaves in the squares and parks, when the street and the boulevards of the city are bathed in dew and reflect as a mirror the spreading, colourful mirages of Kazan. There was always an aboundance of greenery in the city : some of the old gardens and parks have gone, but other still invite the citizens into their shade. Once there was a public garden on the area of the Theatre Square, which now bears the name Freedom Square. In its place, and setting off the monument to Derzhavin, stands the Musa Dzhalil Opera and Ballet Theatre, which has Tatar, Russian and western European ballet and opera classics in its repertory. The old opera house became famous because one of Kazan's most famous sons, Fyodor Chaliapin, sang there. Now the great bass is commemorated by the Chaliapin International Festival of opera singing which has been held in the present opera and ballet theat re for some years.

Many celebrated personalities of the music world have appeared on the stage of this theatre: not long before his life was tragically cut short, Rudolf Nureyev, the Tatar ballet dancer of genius, conducted opera the orchestra. The Tatar musical theat re started its professional history in 1939, with the first staging of N. Zhiganov's opera The Fugitive, but even in the Twenties Tatar musical spectacles were staged in Kazan. A great number of composers and performers of operatic, symphonic and folk music are deeply indebted to the Kazan State Conservatory and its teachers.

Alongside the Conservatory stands the building of the former Nobles'Club, now the Officers'Club, built in 1846 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace. One look at it is enough to conjure up Kazan in the first half of the last century in all i ts new grandeur. The city suffered many fire and sometimes, as during the Pugachev assault in 1774 and the great fire of 1842, almost burnt down completely. However, according to contemporaries, Kazan at the beginning of the nineteenth century was second in its building activity only to the Baltic provinces and Smolensk. Many seventeenth- and eighteenth- century buildings were reconstructed or restored at that time, resulting in the preservation of some that have connections with famous personalites: the residence of the poet E. Baratynsky, for example, or the former hotel of the Nobles"Club, where the famous traveller A. Humboldt lodged in 1829, and where Pushkin stayed in 1833, while working on The History of the Pugachev Rebillion. Not far from this hotel, in a house built in the Russian baroque style which belonged to the leader of the local Russian merchants I. Mikhlyaev, Tsar Peter I stayed on his way to the Caspian Sea. In accordance with Peter's decrees, an Admiralty Office with a sh ip-building yard was founded, and also cloth and leather factories, wich were leased to the hospitable merchant Mikhlyaev. The reign of Peter I had a special significance for Kazan. By on decree, the pricelles ruins of Great Bulgar were placed under prote ction, but other edicts tragically affected the fate of the whole people.

Before the reign of Peter the Great, the territory had continued to be called the Kazan Khanate, and though administered by a governor-general from Moscow, had retained a semblance of independence. When, under Peter, it became the Kazan Province, the obliteration of the ancient name of the once independent state led to a powerful revolt, wich was cruelly put down by the Tsar's troops in 1708. After this, government oppression of the Kazan Tatars assumed greater intensity. Peter's decree of 1713 stated: "The Great Tsar orders the Basurmans of Muhammedian faith in the province of Kazan and Azov, who have estates and lands and house serfs, and employees of Christian faith, this is the decree of the Great Tsar, that they, the Basurman, shall be baptised within six months and when they accept baptism they shall own their estates and lands as before, but if they do not get baptised within six months then those estates and lands, with their people and peasants, will be taken and confiscated by the Great Tsar and will not be given back to anyone except dy special decree".

Those who wanted to be baptised were very few , but the Tatar aristocracy, the murzes, were forced by this decree either to combine with the Russian nobility or to suffer impovershiment and the loss of all privileges. As a result, Tatar family names are often encountered in the genealogies of the Russian nobility and gentry. Given this intense persecution of the Muslim faith, it is no wonder that the Kazan Tatars joined with such enthusiasm in the Pugachev Rebellion. After its suppres sion, Catherine II restored their right not only to freedom of religion, but also to build mosques, although not, or course, in the centre of the city.

In the city centre, Orthodox churches and monasteries were raised, such as the John the Baptist Monastery (1555-1564) and the Voskresenskaya (Resurrection) Church with its bell-tower (1615). The monastery church was demolished because of its dilapidated state in 1886, but other monastery buildings, surmounted by crosses, still stand on the slope of Voskresensky Hill, not far from the Kremlin. A little lower is the eighteenth-century church of St Nicholas Nizskaya. Also preserved are the Dukhososhestvenskaya (Descent of the Holy Ghost) Church, where the young Fyodor Chaliapin sang in the choir, and the Bogoyavlenskaya (Epiphany) Church with a 64-metre-high bell-tower (1897-1904). But of all the Orthodox churches on Kazan, the Peter and Paul Cathedral, con structed (1723-1726) to commemorate Tsar Peter's visit to Kazan, is the most outstanding architecturally, with its impressive dimensions, its brilliantly coloured exterior, its separate, six-storey bell-tower 45 metres high, and its circular open gallery. The cathedral was constructed, with generous donation from the aforementioned merchant Mikhlyaev, in the ornate Russian baroque style, with an abundance of eclectic decorative elements. The architecture of this three-storey building is Russian in spirit, but with the addition of a number of novel elements, such as Corinthian capitals and moulded garlands. It has a valuable gilded and carved wood ikonostasis, two hundred and fifty years old.

In 1829, R.Langel, in his book on Kazan, wrote: "The church the Peter and Paul...has a definite Japanese aspect, and is covered within by a multitude of figures, painted in the brightest colours." N. Kh.Khalitov was similarly impressed: "We have not come across such a combination of colours in church architecture in other provinces in Russia, whereas in the decoration of Tatar mosques, although a little later in date, these very colours dominate: an ochre-yellow back-ground, and pale blue, green, white and red details." It is interesting to compare the colours of the Peter and Paul Cathedral with the riotous hues of the church of St Basil the Blessed in Moscow and the painted decoration of the church at Dyakovo, near Moscow, wich in the opinion of historians of architecture were influenced by Kazan Tatar buildings. The historian of Kazan, M. Khudyakov, noted: "Colours is the basic element of Tatar art... The main distinguishing feature of Tatar painting is polychromy. The Tatars never paint an object in one shade, but always make it different by combining several colours. The astonishingly bold combination of pure, primary colours (yellow with green, green with red, yellow with pale blue) is called "the Tatar taste" by the Russians."

The old Tatar art, architecture and craftsmanship could be seen here and there in the provincial capital of Kazan, in the subjects and ornaments of the bas reliefs, in the exquisite wrought-iron weather-vanes and city railings. The artistic metal-wo rking of Tatar craftsmen has its roots in the ancient Volga Bolgar and old Turkic era, but from the middle of the sixteenth century the Kazan Tatars were forbidden by an imperial decree to engage in all forging and metal-working that required the use of f ire. This prohibition, like others, was removed at the turn of the eighteenth century, by Catherine II again, so that in the intensive construction of Kazan in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Tatar smiths, as well as stonemasons, undoubtedly played their part.

The quarters of Kazan raised at the time give the city an air of grandeur. One of the finest works of the Kazan architect K. Mufke is the building, set in formal park, known as the Sandetsky Palace (1906), which was the residence in its time of the military commander of the Kazan area, General Sandetsky. It now houses the Museum of Fine Arts of Tatarstan, with a remarkable collection of paintings, sculptures and applied art, including engravings, Tatar gold and silver work, pottery, calligrphy and reliefs on metal. There are more than 10,000 works of fine art by, among others, Rokotov, Tropinin, Bryullov, Kramskoy, Shishkin, Repin, Serov, Feshin, Kandinsky, Urmanche, Yakupov and Fattakhov.

Across the road from the Sandetsky Palace is the Exhibition Hall, which houses a permanent collection of works by contemporary Tatarstan artists and stages important temporary exhibitions.

Despite five devastating fires between 1815 and 1859, some remarkable wooden buildings have been preserved, for example, the house the poet E. Baratynsky, close by the Sandetsky Palace, which is now occupied by a music school. Unfortunately , one of the finest examples from the late eighteenth century, the Bronnikov House with its two wings, which formerly stood beside the Sandetsky Palace, fell victim to the frenzy of reconstruction of Soviet times. However, the building of the former Kazan Art School, built in the neo-Russian style by K. Mufke in 1903, survives to adorn the city. The famous painter and native of Kazan, N. Feshin, taught here from 1909 to 1924. In a shady square opposite this building , where one the departments of the Kazan Avia tion Institute is located, a bust of the Lev Tolstoy was erected in 1949. This was not by chance, for the great writer lived here, in the small, two-storey Kiselevsky House, from 1845 to 1846, when he was a student at Kazan University. Tolstoy's youth is connected with Kazan, where he spent almost six years, residing in various houses that are now decorated with memorial plaques. Echoes of his life in Kazan are found in his stories After the Ball and Morning of a Landowner, and the novel Childhood, Boyhood, Youth.

Lev Tolstoy was not the only great Russian writer whose youth was spent in the city. Alongside the former Panaev Gardens, now the Kazan Dynamo Stadium, stands a detached, white stone building that is the Gorky Museum. It occupies the site of a wood en house, in the cellar of which, in Derenkov's bakery, Maxim Gorky worked as an assistant baker from 1886 to 1887, and dreamed of enrolling in Kazan University. Here, too, stands one of the city's most remarkable buildings, erected in 1905 by the architect G. Roush for the rich merchant Kekin in an amazing welter of styles, in which Gothic preponderates. The story goes that the city's leading merchants once got into an argument about which of them could best embellish Kazan. It was at that time that Kekin built his house, the ground floor of which was occupied by his own shops, and the rest by apartaments and offices. Alas, another merchant, named Shamov, won the argument by building a hospital for the city, which still exists. This may, of course, be one of the many myths that proliferate in enigmatic Kazan.

But Kazan does not live in the past. The city has never ceased to grow, and the twentieth-century buildings stand as eloquent landmarks of its development , reflecting all the architectural styles of our contradictory century. The most notable architectural achievements in Kazan since the Thirties are the Finance and Economy Institute, with its broad stone staircase and balustrade, standing on top of one of the Kazan hills and dominating the surrounding areas; the Constructivist Printing House (193 3-1935); and the Parliament building (1962), opposite the Opera and Ballet Theatre, which reshaped the old Theatre Square. The last building, incidentally, stands on the site of the City Opera House which burnt down in 1919. The construction on the bank o f the Kazanka of the Circus building, with its "flying saucer" contours, in 1962 had a striking impact on the landscape and the whole architectural complex of the Kremlin area. This new building replaced the old Kazan Circus, which stood on the other side of the Kremlin in Black Lake Park.

But everything has its hour and soon becomes history. Kazan is impetuously, and sometimes paintfully, entering a completely new age, and what until recently archutectural innovations are already becoming memorials of past times. It seems only yesterday that highrise building began to spring up, especially in the area beyond the river on the right bank of the Kazanka. Several tall hotels were built and new building of the newspaper and magazine publishing house, as well as a memorial complex on the high bank of the Kazanka, which offers a magnificent panorama of the areas of the city across the river. But these monuments to the recent Soviet history on the city have now taken their place in the Kazan chronicle alongside the residences of the city 's go vernors, aristocracy and merchants, its parks and streets that have so often changed their names.

Even the waterways of Kazan have not survived unaltered. Once the city stood back a few miles the Volga, and the Kazanka was a narrow stream, lapping at the hills crowned by the upper town. When the Kama reservoir was created, the Great Volga came right up to the city, and the Kazanka became a wide expanse of water that gives an impressive aspect to the city landscape. The Black, Bannoe and Clear lakes, which in the Middle Ages formed the natural boundaries of the Kazan citadel, have disappeared, and city gardens have long been cultivated on their sites.

Everything changes, but the enchantment of Kazan with its coexisting national cultures remains.