Factories in the Urals resemble the Kremlin. Life used to be built around them. Ponds, dams, factories, pagodas and workers' houses are typical urban landscapes. Sysert is no exception. Only here all this is surrounded by majestic nature. This is where the storyteller Pavel Bazhov comes from. Here, forty kilometers from Yekaterinburg, he was born and lived until the age of ten, and was a lifelong inspiration.
For Bazhov, Sysert has always been the city of childhood. Where can you fish for grasshoppers? The forest is like home. Where grandmother and grandfather were the first storytellers of ancient legends. As an adult, Bazhov heard them from “grandfather Slyshko” at the Polevsky factory and from workers at Sysert – between 1925 and 1935 he visited the Ural factories six times. Later, when he lost his child and did not know how to overcome the pain, he wrote famous fairy tales. The collection “Malachite Box” will be published when he is 60 years old.
The world of Bazhov's story is about the power of nature and people. Everything is run by the strict mistress of the copper mountain. In the forest you can meet a deer, from under its hooves fly precious gems. And where the radiant Ognevushka-Jumping appeared, there was gold – “like a planted radish”. By the way, this is a rare form of placer gold, that is, a geological fact that Bazhov usually has in abundance.
– Bazhov assures that the facts are correct. Before writing anything, I carefully ask the stonemasons. Well, in Sysert in those days, if you wrote about stones, you couldn't help but understand anything,” the owner of a stone shop, Yuri Ilmurzin, told me.
Yuuri studied to become a geologist and went on his first rock collecting trip in 1985. After that, he worked in all sorts of ways but kept his passion. I went to consignments, amassed a good collection, and a few years ago opened my own store. Just like Bazhov: “He must have been captured by the stone force. Knowing that whoever caught him on the edge will not release him.” Behind the glass in the store there are lapis lazuli, rhodonite, talc, jasper, agate, sunstone… Malachite does not come from here – from Africa, Ural reserves have long been scarce. Bazhov also has a story about this – “Iron Tires”.
For creating a special world, Bazhov was called the Ural Tolkien, although his stories were not fantasy but were based on childhood impressions and exploited folklore. As Ural writer Maya Nikulina noted, the wonders of Bazhov's stories “are here inexorably, inseparable from us and our mountain.” Location is Sysert and surrounding area. The prototype of the old boss was the owner of factories in the mountainous district of Sysert, Alexey Turchaninov. The writer's father worked there, cooking iron from cast iron.
Local historian Alexander Savichev has been studying the history of the city for many years, showing tourists the streets where fairy tale heroes walked. He says that Bazhov's world is quite realistic. This is the street where orphan Darenka from “Silver Hoof” lives – formerly Glinnaya, now Sheinkman. The prototype house of Kokovani's grandfather, who sheltered Darenka, still stands today at 72 Sverdlov Street. A powerful frame.
On the pale nine-story building there is a bright sign – a stone flower. It's all like this – a bridge between fairy tales and reality. People here try not to look for beauty but to see it. For example, a once-fading porcelain factory is now a center of the creative economy and industrial tourism. The young designers included in the “Antifragility” creative laboratory came to the legendary Soviet production with their ideas and sketches. And when visiting the workshops, you can see that an elegant handmade cup can withstand the weight of an adult.
The new “hardware” – installations, performances and exhibitions – was produced by artists and directors at the former Turchaninov-Solomirsky ironworks. Five years ago, its territory was cleared of trash and turned into an art cluster. The “Summer at the Factory” festival is noisy. True, so far only from June to September.
Here, in an abandoned factory of the 18th century, Savichev founded a museum, together with volunteers collecting artifacts – bricks, iron, cannons, irons… Some things were found on the territory itself, but many were donated to the museum or purchased through crowdfunding. “For example, the personal seal of factory owner Dmitry Solomirsky is for sale, I write, let the whole world buy it. And people from all over the country will help,” says Alexander. In five years, 1,465 people helped the museum.
The Sysert phenomenon is not a nomenclature approach but an invention. The Sysert Development Authority attracts grants and businesses, gathering ideas from townspeople. Everyone brought something of their own and the authorities did not refuse. “Both the museum and the creative cluster are created by people who care. And the situation itself is fascinating, the way we all do those things together, applying different forces,” Alexander said.
I went to the Bazhov house museum. Children visiting class 3B were told stories about boys who used to go to the factory at the age of 10-12: “The work is very simple – I come at 5 am, go home at 5 pm. 12-hour shift.” A similar fate awaited Pasha Bazhova – seven generations of his family all worked at the factory. But one day he took a Pushkin book from the library. “You will get a new book when you memorize this book,” said the librarian. Of course he was joking, but the boy took the words seriously and learned a lot. The district doctor, an acquaintance of the family, noticed that Pasha knew Pushkin by heart and advised the parents to teach their son further. And he even helps with that. Bazhov first entered the Ekaterinburg Theological School, then the Perm Seminary. “If it weren't for Pushkin, I would still be a factory boy with a four-year education,” Bazhov said. This means that without Pushkin there would be no “Malachite Box” and other stories. And without this, Sysert today would be completely different.
