The VGAVT River Fleet Museum is a departmental museum of Volga State Academy of Water Transport (VGAVT), operating at the institution in Nizhny Novgorod. It is included in the official list of museums of higher educational institutions of Nizhny Novgorod, published by the Ministry of Support and Development of Small Business, Consumer Market and Services of Nizhny Novgorod Region, and is recommended by the regional tourism portal for cultural and educational visits.[1]

Exhibition

The museum traces the history of river navigation from ancient times to the modern era. The exhibition opens with materials on dugout canoes and shitiks — light flat-bottomed vessels that could be dragged overland between rivers.[2] It then presents vessels of barge construction: gusyans, mokshans, unzhaks, kolomnkas, rashivas, and belyans, whose names generally derive from the places where they were built.[2]

A dedicated section of the exhibition is devoted to belyans — the largest timber-rafting vessels on Russia's rivers. Their dimensions were comparable to ocean-going ships: length reached 100 metres, width 25 metres, and freeboard up to 6 metres; the crew on large belyans numbered as many as 80 people. Belyans were built in timber-producing areas of the Upper Volga and the Kama, floated down to Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) and Astrakhan, and then broken up down to the last plank. The last belyan sailed the Volga in 1926.[2]

Also on display are rashivas — the most common river vessels of the pre-steam era. They were built mainly in the Kostroma, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan governorates from pine and spruce timber, reached more than fifty metres in length, and had masts up to 32 metres tall. With a following wind, rashivas could cover up to two hundred kilometres in a day. The hulls were decorated with carved "faraonkas" — images of river spirits.[2] The exhibition also includes a diorama depicting a scene of burlak (barge-hauler) labour, and a model of the galley Tver — a 39-metre vessel aboard which, in spring 1767, Catherine II sailed along the Volga from Tver to Simbirsk as part of a flotilla of 23 ships, accompanied by a retinue of 1,122 people.[2]

Among the museum's thematic sections is an exhibition dedicated to Ivan Kulibin, the Nizhny Novgorod mechanic and inventor.[2]

Affiliation and Status

The museum operates within the structure of VGAVT — the university of water transport, whose president is Valeriy Mineev and rector is Igor Konstantinovich Kuzmichyov.[2]

The VGAVT River Fleet Museum is among the state museums of Nizhny Novgorod that offered free admission on National Unity Day, 4 November 2012, alongside other municipal museums.[3]

Sources

  1. tourismnn.ru — Museums / Nizhny Novgorod Region: monuments of cultural and natural heritage, regional resorts, tourism (archive)
  2. urban3p.ru — VGAVT River Fleet Museum (part 1) (archive)
  3. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — All museums can be visited free of charge tomorrow (archive)