A monastery about 130 kilometers north of the city of Vologda.
Click here for more photographs of churches and monasteries near Vologda.
Tag Archives: Vologda
Photos: Scenes around Vologda
A small town about 130km north of Vologda.
Proletarian lace
Lace: Victory to the USSR
Vologda is known for a few things, namely monasteries, dairy products, and lace.
Come October 1918, being an agricultural center famed for making such a bourgeois thing as lace wasn’t a mark in favor of Vologda in the minds of the Bolsheviks. Neither, of course, was Vologda’s pro-White (that’s Anti-Bolshevik) political orientation during the Russian Civil War.
Indeed, Vologda suffered heavily during Lenin’s Red Terror, and later during the collectivization imposed by Stalin (Not so much for making lace, but more because the area was largely populated by farmers).
In any event, the lace-makers of Vologda faced a challenge: how to reconcile their decidedly upper-class product with the Soviet Union’s proletarian ideals.
The solution: Lace glorifying industry, agriculture, and the Soviet Union, as we saw at the Vologda Lace Museum. Click here to see a few pieces of Soviet lace.
Tagged agriculture, Bolshevik, Civil War, farm, Lace, lenin, museum, photo, power lines, proletarian, Red Terror, stalin, star, USSR, Vologda
The overnight train to Vologda
My apologies for not putting up a post for the last week. It’s been busy since we returned from Vologda Monday morning. But I’ll be publishing lots of photos from Vologda over the next few weeks to try and make up for it.
A countryside scene on the way to Vologda.
It takes about 12 hours by overnight train to cover the 600 kilometers from St. Petersburg straight east to Vologda, a small, “authentic,” Russian town. We, the whole Duke in St. Petersburg group, left for Vologda last Friday evening, spent two full days there, and returned to St. Petersburg early Monday morning.
Vologda is several times larger than Rockville, or for you Dukies, around the size of Durham, but it retains a small-town feel, perhaps because it’s population is spread over such a large area. Few tourists venture to Vologda, and just about zero Americans. It’s a pity, because Vologda and the surrounding area is beautiful, full of old Russian (15th-16th century) churches and monasteries, open countryside, and fresh air.
I’ll be writing more about Vologda as I sort through and post photos from my trip, but for now, click here to view photographs shot from the windows of our leisurely train ride.
A steel plant near Vologda.
Zachary Tracer 