Bogorodsk — a city of tanners, another widely known historic industrial center of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. It lies some distance from the Oka River (8 kilometers away), roughly halfway between Nizhny Novgorod and Pavlovo.
Geographic features
The small Ryazanka River flows through Bogorodsk, emptying into the Ryazanka, which flows into the Kudma River (a tributary of the Volga River). Such, in broad outline, is the natural backdrop against which this city stands.
Almost in the center of Bogorodsk lies a large lake known as "Kabatskoye Boloto" (Tavern Swamp), which was drained for a time before the war and cleared out.
History of Bogorodsk
Bogorodsk appeared in the sixteenth century, not yet as a town but already as a selo (a larger village). The selo of Bogarodskoye was founded by settlers who had fallen out of favor in Veliky Novgorod under Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Some of the Novgorodians — around three hundred people — were resettled across the territory of the Muscovite state. Here, along the road between Murom and Nizhny Novgorod, the settlement of Bogarodskoye came into being. The history of Bogorodsk as an economic center closely parallels that of Pavlovo. Situated on the same Moscow–Nizhny Novgorod road, it too had long been a sizeable settlement whose land-poor peasants were compelled to seek additional sources of income. Here too "…the Sheremetev landowners are remembered (early 19th century) as having contributed greatly to the development of the trade." The emergence of leather crafts here in particular is largely explained by the fact that the exiled Novgorodians who settled in Bogorodsk in the second half of the 16th century were well versed in tanning.
Until the 17th century, like Pavlovo, Bogorodsk was a palace selo; in 1615 it was granted to Kuzma Minin "for his Kuzma's great service" and "the cleansing of Moscow," and in 1632, following Pavlovo, Bogorodsk passed into the hereditary estate of the princely Cherkassky family, and in the 18th century became a possession of the Sheremetevs.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Bogorodsk counted about 120 tanneries, it was already, as with Pavlovo, known throughout Russia. Bogorodsk leather goods — harness and collar products and mittens, of which up to one million pairs were produced annually — were widely distributed across the entire country.
Raw materials arriving in Bogorodsk came mainly from distant sources, flowing in from the lower Volga River and other southeastern steppe regions (purchased at various markets, including the Nizhny Novgorod Yarmarka).
Working conditions at the Bogorodsk tanneries were punishing; many workers lived where they worked, sleeping on the vats of fermenting hides, from which heavy fumes rose continuously.
Pre-revolutionary Bogorodsk, with its population of more than ten thousand, was a mass of wooden, mostly single-story houses crowded into a marshy lowland. Industrial buildings intermingled with dwellings, impassable mud on the boggy streets, tannery waste strewn everywhere, the river polluted by its effluents, a heavy fetid smell spreading far beyond the town's boundaries — such was the picture of old Bogorodsk.
After the Great October Socialist Revolution, the hundreds of small semi-artisan and artisan tanneries in Bogorodsk — which had grandly called themselves factories — gave way to around a dozen large enterprises that were fundamentally reconstructed and mechanized. For example, the labor-intensive manual liming of hides in vats was replaced by mechanized liming in drums.
During the Soviet period, entirely new enterprises were also built in Bogorodsk — a leatherette factory (Kozhzamenitel), a harness-and-saddle works, a leather goods factory, and others. As a result, leather production became more diversified, and in the post-war years it was further supplemented by footwear manufacturing, which significantly reduced the export of semi-finished goods elsewhere. These successes in the leather industry were in large part linked to advances in Soviet chemistry, which supplied the tanning industry with tanning agents, dyes, and other necessary substances.
Of great importance for the development of Bogorodsk's leather industry was the improvement of its transport connections — in particular, the construction in 1920 of a rail branch line to Kudma Station (on the Gorky–Arzamas line), which linked the city to the country's railway network.
It was in Bogorodsk that the reconstruction of factories and the optimization and upgrading of the leather industry were actively pursued.
The city's name derives from the name of the former selo. One view holds that the name is connected with the designation of the parish church. Before the name "Bogarodskoye" other designations also existed — "Bogaroditskoye" and others.
City coat of arms
Three dressed hides symbolize the tanning industry for which the city is known.
By Resolution No. 40 of the Zemsky Assembly of Bogorodsky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, dated 23 April 2004, "On the Review of the Sketch of the Coat of Arms of the City of Bogorodsk," the sketch of the coat of arms of the city of Bogorodsk submitted by the competition commission for review was approved and recommended for confirmation by the Heraldic Commission of the Nizhny Novgorod Region and the Legislative Assembly of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Appended to this Resolution was a description of the coat of arms of the city of Bogorodsk:
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The coat of arms of the city of Bogorodsk takes the form of a shield with a specified aspect ratio. The surface of the shield is divided in half by a horizontal line into two parts.
In the upper part of the shield is a figure of a deer: on a silver field, a walking gules deer with black antlers and hooves — as a symbol of the city of Bogorodsk's belonging to the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The lower part of the shield is divided into three vertical sections. The two outer stripes are colored azure (in heraldry, azure signifies beauty, gentleness, and majesty) and represent two rivers — the Oka and the Kudma River — between which lies the historic area of Berezopoye. This is symbolized by a wide central green stripe (in heraldry, green signifies hope, joy, and abundance). On the green stripe, at the center top, is an image of an Orthodox church (silver in color, with a golden dome and cross), symbolizing the Orthodox meaning of the city's name. In the lower part of the green stripe, three images of hides (gold) are symmetrically arranged, as a symbol of leatherworking — the traditional occupation of Bogorodsk's inhabitants, which became the foundation of the city's prosperity and distinguishes it from other cities of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. |
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Sights
Interesting facts
- In Russia there are only two cities that have retained streets with the word "Esperanto" in their name: "Esperanto Street" in Kazan and "Esperantistov Lane" in Bogorodsk.