Glass museum of the Krasny May factory in Vyshny Volochyok - podmoskva. "Red May": from ruby ​​to ruins

Glass Museum of the "Krasny May" Factory August 5th, 2011

(This is my first entry, so please do not judge strictly.)
This summer, in July, I was on vacation with my family in the village. Krasnomayskiy Vyshnevolotskiy district, Tver region. This is not the first time I have been there, and I know about a glass factory that has not been operating for a long time. I knew from my wife that the factory had a museum of historical exhibits of the factory and modern works of glass art. I was sure that the museum no longer exists, because the plant has been bankrupt for many years, on its territory there is a hasty sawing of the remains of equipment for scrap metal. And so, from one friend I heard that someone had visited the museum quite recently. I decided to try my luck too, and went to the checkpoint of the plant to find out information about the opening hours.

Arriving there, I learned that the museum can be accessed from 9 am to 2 pm on any day, except Saturday and Sunday. Since it was already late, the trip was postponed to another day.
In the morning I stood like a bayonet at the entrance at 9 am. The woman in charge of the museum hadn’t been there yet, so I was looking at the hall. There were some slot machines, a whole warehouse, some motor scooters, ATVs, and many other things in a bunch. The handle of the front door caught my attention. Apparently the thick glass front door has been preserved in its original form.

Soon the head of the museum came. In my opinion her name is Svetlana (I don’t know the middle name). A benevolent woman of about thirty-five (that's in my opinion). She immediately took me through the territory of the plant to the museum building. By the way, the path to the museum was overgrown with grass, which Svetlana complained about afterwards.
Having opened the lock on the door, we went up to the second floor of a separate building. Showcases and shelves full of exhibits appeared before my eyes. I have not seen such an accumulation of glass objects for a long time !!! Having secured permission, I began to take photographs, passing further into the hall.

Previously, this plant was very famous, from the mouth of my wife I heard earlier that the Kremlin stars were made at this plant, I found confirmation of this information in the records of the museum. Even on one pedestal, exactly the same glasses lie as exhibits, here they are below two triangles:

I found out that the plant has existed since 1859. Founded by the merchant of the II guild, Andrei Vasilyevich Bolotin. A bit of history:
The KRASNY MAY glass factory is located on the banks of the Shlina River. One of the largest in the country, it was founded in 1859 as a chemical chemist by the Moscow titular adviser Samarin. But Samarin did not have enough funds for the further development of production and the plant was bought by the Vyshnevolotsk merchant of the II guild, Andrei Vasilyevich Bolotin. In 1873, the owners of the plant - the merchants of Bolotina - built the first oven, which produced glassware: a dining room, a pastry shop, and ceiling lamps. In the same year, an experienced glassmaker came to the plant - the owner of the secret of compiling a charge for melting colored glasses - Vasily Alekseevich Vekshin. And for the first time in Russia, at the Bolotinsky plant, they began to brew colored glass with a variety of colors. Already in 1882 and 1886, the new products of the plant, "absolutely remarkable in their diversity and unexpected elegance" (as appreciated by the well-known professor at the time - "glass expert" A.K. Krupsky), was awarded two gold and two silver medals of the All-Russian artistic -industrial exhibitions in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod for the rich color range and for the thoroughness of processing. In 1920, the plant was nationalized and it became the property of the state. On May 1, 1923, a meeting of workers and employees of the plant was held, at which a decision was made to rename the plant to the KRASNY MAY plant. Since that time, the plant began to expand, they began to build new glass furnaces. During World War II (1942-1945), the plant produced large quantities of technical glass for the needs of the Navy and aviation, semaphore and traffic light lenses, lamp glass, and battery vessels were manufactured. In the 40s, a very important period in the history of the plant, when the first government order for the manufacture of ruby ​​glass for the Kremlin stars was honorably fulfilled. In 1946, the task was completed successfully. In the 50-60s, cutting of glassware with gold, enamel, chandelier, silicate paints became widespread at the plant. Products were also produced from two-three-layer glass. But Krasnoyans are especially famous for their sulphide glass, which is not in vain called the "Russian miracle" for the inexhaustible richness of color. And it is also called so for its exceptional ability to change color depending on the temperature and duration of processing, which gives the mass product a unique uniqueness. This material was mastered by the plant in 1959, "KRASNY MAY" was, in fact, the only enterprise not only in our country, but throughout the world, where sulphide glass was fixed as an indispensable glass of the factory range.

It turns out that these can be kerosene lamps:

In general, I was amazed by the variety of shapes and colors, and all this glass is in the skillful hands of craftsmen. Here are some more interesting exhibits:
Funny boot:

Abstract vase:

Olympic bear on a decanter)))
Interesting abstract idea of ​​the artist:

Green glass bouquet:
Jug:

Unusual pumpkins)))
What a fertile material - glass in the hands of a master. The flowers are very similar to real, very graceful petals:

This exhibit interested me, because I was born in 1981)))

Petition to the Governor of Tver for the construction of the plant:

Unfortunately the photos were unsigned ... like all the exhibits in the museum.

This is how old documents and photographs are located (glued to the stand, and the stand is removed behind the exhibits to the wall):

The layout of the furnace for melting sand into glass:
In fact, there are a lot of photos, and anyone interested can visit my Yandex-photos page.

Having shot enough, I decided not to detain Svetlana any longer. Together we went to the entrance, where she said that she was in such a hurry that she forgot to take a visit fee. At first I was on my guard, but when they told me the amount of 30 rubles, I relaxed, because taking a bunch of interesting photos is definitely more expensive. This was the end of my trip to the museum. I am complaining that I forgot to photograph the very inscription on the building "Museum of the plant".
A visit to the museum left a double impression. On the one hand, there is admiration for the works, on the other, the depressing state of the plant itself, and the lack of prospects of this museum. Upon arrival home, I found out that the plant was put up for sale for 152 million rubles (or $ 5.72 million). As follows from the text of the accompanying announcement: the buildings and equipment are of no value or interest, and are subject to demolition. Of interest is the infrastructure: the convenience of the entrance, its own branch of the railway, the power of electricity and gas. That is, it is interesting to someone who decides to build a plant on this territory from scratch.

And here is what we managed to find out about the prospects of the museum: The new owners of the plant from St. Petersburg tried to take the collection to St. Petersburg. And apparently they wanted to "push" the exhibits from the auction, but so far the indignant people and the local press interfered. Details in

You enter the peeling building of the factory museum, it seems that on the territory of the factory, only it and the gatehouse are more or less intact, and you freeze. Culture shock. You squint, try to imagine how long a queue would stand for such a museum in any European country, and squint again. It's just you, the curator of the museum and the exhibits. Not like a queue, people rarely come across around. And there is SUCH a museum. The museum of what we have lost is almost irretrievable.

The history of the colored glass factory was 129 years old when the furnace was shut down. For this kind of production, stopping the kiln - stopping the heart - is certain death. 1873 - 2002. These are the years of life. R.I.P. RedMay.

The zvodsky entrance, the columns are sheathed, or rather were sheathed, with glass tiles, they made this tile here.

Since 1873, the former chemical factory here changes owners, and the new owner - merchant of the 2nd guild Andrei Vasilyevich Bolotin - puts the first glass-making furnace and in the same year the famous glassmaker Vasily Vekshin comes to the factory, thanks to him the plant starts working with colored glass and successfully does this until the closing itself. Until the 90s of the 20th century, the history of the plant is a success story. "Absolutely remarkable in its diversity and unexpected grace" - this is how the well-known "glass expert" professor A.K. Krupsky. Gold and silver medals at the All-Russian art and industrial exhibitions in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, received in the 19th century, in the 20th century, the most famous order received by the plant - ruby ​​glass from Kremlin stars, against their background making gifts for the anniversaries of Khrushchev and other significant figures our Soviet past is already so, nothing for a pinch of tobacco. It's scary to think - on the site of these ruins there were workshops in which the Kremlin stars were made - the symbol of the country ...

between the lamps are parts of the Kremlin stars, ruby ​​glass.

We thought we would spend about an hour in the museum, but two hours were not enough for us. Having finished the first circle in a small, and only, hall of the museum, we were ready to repeat. It constantly seemed that we had missed something, that we had missed something. The exposition is very rich.

it is difficult to expect to see a sickle and a hammer among such vignettes.

Sulphide glass, crackle, layering, gold, enamel, chandelier painting, silicate paints, diamond facet, deep etching ... The masters of the plant mastered processing techniques no worse than the famous Czechs and Muranians.

golden ruby ​​glass.

"Red May" - as the plant was called since 1923 - is the only plant in the world where sulphide glass was used to create mass products of the main assortment.

there are three layers of glass - colored inside, an intermediate layer - transparent and milky outside.

Sulphide glass at different degrees of heating and duration of processing can give a wide range of colors and shades from pale blue to almost black, through a coffee-amber scale, and this glass can also change the degree of transparency. It was first invented in 1952 by engineers E.A. Ivanova and A.A. Kiryonen at the Leningrad Art Glass Factory. And since 1959, it has already been widely used on the Red May.

Shown here are the sulphide glass colors.

In 2002, the glass furnaces were shut down. Even with a planned cold repair of the furnace, draining the glass and starting the furnace following the repair is a long and expensive process, and so, if you stop without hopes for the future, there are almost no chances for the next start. But, apparently, no one was going to restore production. The ovens with frozen glass were simply broken. Now the entire territory of the plant is partly ruined, partly slowly decaying. Creepy.

But the museum is still alive. Miraculously, it was not stolen and sold out since the 90s. Without heating in winter, it is good at least with electricity, almost on the same enthusiasm. Low bow to his caretaker, for what she is doing, that the museum is alive on the ruins of the plant, for not plundered funds.

http://vvredmay.ru/index5.htm the site of the plant has not been updated since 2004.

Ready for criticism!

Part 1. Say a word about the Kremlin stars
The coming year could be marked by two dates - albeit not jubilee, but significant in its own way: the 157th anniversary of the founding of the chemical plant near Vyshny Volochk and the 87th anniversary of the day this plant received its last name, under which it all know - "Red May". They knew. Today, instead of a unique enterprise, once known for its crystal, there are only ruins.

However, there is also a round date - exactly 70 years ago, stars from glass made at Red May began to shine over the Moscow Kremlin. Once the plant was famous throughout the USSR. Still would! "The Kremlin stars, made by the hands of Krasnoai craftsmen, shine over the whole country." - I am reading the 1988 guidebook. Of course, not entirely: the ruby ​​tops of the spiers of the towers are a complex engineering structure, on the creation of which dozens of enterprises and research institutes worked. But the laminated glass made at Krasny May is far from the last part of this structure. Therefore, the words of almost thirty years ago, despite the pathos, are close to the truth. What is left of that pride? Ruined workshops, which are unlikely to be rebuilt when. Yes, a museum that survives on one word of honor.

* * *
A few kilometers from Vyshny Volochok in the direction of St. Petersburg is the village of Krasnomaysky. True, the locals do not call him that; this toponym exists only in official documents. “I will go to Red May”, “I live on Red May” - saying this, people mean the village, not the factory. In the middle of the 19th century, there was the village of Klyuchino, where in 1859 the future flagship of the glass industry emerged. First as a chemical one. Its first owner, the titular adviser Samarin, did not have enough funds for further development of production, and three years later the plant was bought out by the merchant of the second guild, Andrei Bolotin, who soon built a glassworks in its place. Later he founded another plant on the territory of the present Vyshnevolotsky district - Borisovsky (now - JSC "Medsteklo Borisovskoye"). The first glass-making furnace at the Klyuchinsky plant was launched by the merchant and founder of the Bolotins dynasty of glassmakers in 1873. Also, at the expense of the owners of the plant, a working village, which was quite comfortable by the standards of that time, was built.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Klyuchinsky plant produced glass pharmaceutical, table and confectionery dishes, kerosene lamps, shades, fulfilling orders from almost all parts of the empire. Soon the October Revolution broke out, the plant was nationalized and in 1929 it was named "Red May". Around the enterprise, a village of 5 thousand inhabitants grew up with a hospital, a school, a music school, a vocational school, which trained, in addition to glass-makers, tractor drivers and car mechanics. Much has been written about "Red May" in the regional and central press. Let's remember what newspapers and magazines were talking about then and compare all this with the present remnants of its former greatness.

"When you look at the Kremlin stars, it seems as if they have been crowning pointed towers from time immemorial: so much is their flame in unity with a beautiful monument of Russian architecture, so natural in our minds the inseparability of two symbols - the heart of the Motherland and the five-pointed star"(Pravda, 1985). It just so happened that we say "Red May", but we mean five ruby ​​tops. And vice versa. Therefore, I would like to start my story from this page. Moreover, the stars of Vyshnevolotsk, and now adorning the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya, Borovitskaya, Troitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya towers of the Kremlin, were not the first.

For the first time, five-pointed stars replaced the symbol of autocratic Russia - two-headed eagles - in the fall of 1935. They were made of high-alloy stainless steel and red copper, with a gilded hammer and sickle lined in the center of each star. However, the first stars did not adorn the Kremlin towers for long. Firstly, they quickly faded under the influence of atmospheric precipitation, and secondly, in the overall composition of the Kremlin they looked rather ridiculous and violated the architectural ensemble. Therefore, it was decided to install ruby ​​glowing stars.

New tops appeared on November 2, 1937. Each of them could rotate like a weather vane and had a frame in the form of a polyhedral pyramid. The order for the manufacture of ruby ​​glass was received by the Avtosteklo plant in the city of Konstantinovka in the Donbass. It had to transmit red rays of a certain wavelength, be mechanically strong, resistant to sudden changes in temperature, not discolor or collapse from exposure to solar radiation. The glazing of the stars was double: the inner layer consisted of milky (matte, dull white) glass 2 mm thick, due to which the light from the lamp was scattered evenly over the entire surface, and the outer layer was made of ruby ​​6-7 mm. Each star weighed about a ton and had a surface area of ​​8 to 9 square meters.

During the Great Patriotic War, the stars were extinguished and covered. When they were reopened after the Victory, numerous cracks and traces of shell fragments were found on the ruby ​​surface. Restoration was needed. This time, the Vyshnevolotsk plant "Krasny May" was charged with making glass. The local craftsmen made it four-layer: at the bottom there is transparent crystal, then frosted glass, again crystal and, finally, ruby. This is necessary so that the star both during the day in the sunlight and at night, illuminated from the inside, was the same color. “Ruby stars made at the Konstantinovskiy plant did not fulfill the task set by the designers. The double layer of glass - milky and ruby ​​- made it impossible to preserve the bright color of the stars. Dust accumulated between the layers. And laminated glass by that time was produced, in my opinion, only on "Red May"("Kalininskaya Pravda", 1987). “I think readers will be interested to know how prototypes of star glass were made. It took 32 tons of high-quality Lyubertsy sand, 3 tons of zinc muffle white, 1.5 tons of boric acid, 16 tons of soda ash, 3 tons of potash, 1.5 tons of potassium nitrate to make a multilayer ruby ​​for just one star. "("Youth", 1981).

The renewed stars shone in 1946. And they still shine, despite the calls of some public figures to replace them with eagles again. The next reconstruction of the ruby ​​"luminaries" was in 1974, and again the Krasnoai craftsmen took part in it. Despite the existing experience, the brewing technology had to be created, as they say, from scratch: archival documents, according to which it was possible to restore the "recipe", have not been preserved.

I must say that in 2010 about the 75th anniversary of the first Kremlin stars they wrote a lot in the central media, but the contribution of "Red May" was never mentioned anywhere. Not in 1996, when the plant was still working, at the very least, despite the fact that the salary was already paid out there in vases and wine glasses. Not in 2006 - at least in pursuit of a train that had already left ...

It was once a board of honor

* * *
“Yesterday a batch of clear and milky glass parts for lighting fixtures of the Moscow PI Tchaikovsky Conservatory was sent from the Vyshnevolotsk plant“ Krasny May ”. It was not easy for glassmakers to repeat the bizarre shapes of ancient chandeliers and sconces that have been lighting the halls of this musical educational institution for more than a hundred years. "(Kalininskaya Pravda, 1983). “Several years ago the craftsmen of the Vyshnevolotsk glass factory“ Krasny May ”, at the request of Bulgarian friends, made ruby ​​glass for the memorial of friendship built on the famous Shipka. And now a new order from Bulgaria - to make a four-layer glass for the star, which will crown the Party House in Sofia. The team of craftsmen N. Ermakov, A. Kuznetsov, N. Nasonov and A. Bobovnikov was entrusted with the execution of the export order. " ("Pravda", 1986).

"A beautiful village-garden with paved roads, well-maintained cottages, a club, a school and other public buildings, with a plant-garden in the center, from where products of almost two thousand items are sold all over the world"("Kalininskaya Pravda", 1959). “Yesterday, a joyful message came from Moscow to GPTU-24 of the Vyshnevolotsk plant“ Krasny May ”. By the decree of the Glavvystavkom VDNKh USSR for the development and participation in the manufacture of vases "Jubilee" and "Cup", presented at the All-Union review of art works of vocational schools, bronze medals were awarded to masters of industrial training T. Orlova and T. Shamrina. And students Irina Yarosh and Eduard Vedernikov were awarded the medal "Young participant of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements"("Kalininskaya Pravda", 1983). For comparison. The village-garden is an ordinary suburban village, of which there are thousands. It seems not abandoned, but there is also no hint of neatness. Houses-cottages are, apparently, wooden two-story barracks still with cesspools. The only thing that you can catch your eye is a small church of the holy martyr Thaddeus, completed just a few years ago.

The story of the collapse of the Krasny May plant is, in a sense, canonical. The enterprise survived the 90s with dignity, headed by the "red director" L. Shapiro. At the beginning of the 2000s, new people were introduced to the board of directors of the plant, who quickly brought it to bankruptcy and privatized. Mikhail Pruzhinin is still listed as the main founder of Krasny May Glass Factory LLC, and Andrey Ustinovsky is the co-founder. Both have been on the wanted list for 5 years in a high-profile criminal case against the Rostovskie organized crime group. The investigation considers them to be the leaders of this criminal group, the backbone of which, despite the name, were residents of St. Petersburg. The rest of the Rostov gangs received real sentences in 2011 on charges of extortion, fraud and abuse of office.

Konstantin Litvin

chief artist
plant "Red May"
from 1986 to 2002

In the 90s, when Leonid Dmitrievich Shapiro was the director, the plant survived. We even walked decently enough compared to others. Then Shapiro retired, there was some kind of leapfrog with the leadership, but we were still working, finally, in 2002 a new director Valov came, his St. Petersburg comrades appointed him together with the then mayor of the city Khasainov. To begin with, they decided to privatize the plant. In order to buy it for a penny, they bankrupted it. They went bankrupt, extinguished all ovens, and dispersed all employees. It was 2002. They received the plant, but it did not work back. All large glass factories experienced something similar then. Both Gus-Khrustalny and Dyatkovo, they moved from one bankruptcy to another, the third, but remained afloat. So, at the very least, they moved. But ours, in general, went to the bottom.

In general, our plant was the third largest glass plant in the country. Gus-Khrustalny, Dyatkovo and Red May. The best period of his activity was more than three thousand employees and a very wide range of tableware and lighting fixtures. In general, it was one of the best factories. And the first colored glass factory is probably the best in the country. We brewed such glasses as sulphide, ruby ​​and so on. It is no coincidence that we received the order for the Kremlin stars. It was the pride of the country.

These strange people who appeared on the board of directors did not listen to me, did not listen to other specialists and were only engaged in taking money out of the enterprise.

Now there is nothing left but the museum. First, they sold everything that was iron for scrap, and ended up dismantling all the brick partitions that were in the workshops, selling bricks and handing over the workshops. Although we persuaded them before the final closure, they turned on the oven, and this oven made a profit of one million rubles every month. At that time it was very decent money. I told them, as the main artist: “Turn on the oven, we will make an assortment and earn a certain amount of money, we will build two more ovens, then we will buy a new line, and so on. This is not to say that no one bought the products. We also had such things as colored sheet glass. We were monopolists. Nobody else in the country made this colored patterned glass, patterned glass, it is also reinforced. The Indian exported was several orders of magnitude more expensive. Construction and furniture companies were happy to buy this glass. But these strange people who appeared on the board of directors did not listen to me, did not listen to other specialists and were only engaged in taking money out of the enterprise. Incompetence is what buried our plant.

The museum, of course, is a pity. He also belongs to these comrades. There is a building that is not heated at all. And there is one girl who comes only if the excursion is booked. And the exhibits there are of great cultural and material value. The plant is more than 150 years old, there are many pre-revolutionary products, when it was still the plant of the merchant Bolotin, the supplier of His Imperial Majesty, by the way.

Incompetence is what buried our plant.

My wife and I survived normally, we are artists, we have a workshop, we are engaged in cold processing. We have collected orders, we are doing exhibitions, we are leading a fairly active creative life. But for many workers, stopping the plant turned out to be tantamount to death.

Since the enterprise was a city-forming one, almost everyone in the village worked on it. Someone after closing went to work as a security guard, someone to Moscow, someone went to other factories, someone drank themselves, someone died, someone even committed suicide. Creepy. It's just impossible to talk about it without tears. You see, many masters had a narrow specialty with very high qualifications, they treated their work with pride and respect, and suddenly they found themselves at a broken trough. Other factories then were also on fire, there was no work in their specialty, and when such a master goes to get a job as a security guard, it is, of course, a tragedy.

When the plant was closed, the grown men and grandfathers who worked there, they all just cried. They stopped glass stoves full of stoves. Usually, when the stove is stopped, it is completely emptied out, it is exhausted completely in order to light it up later. And here the ovens were simply turned off, and that was all. The men roared. This also meant that everything, the end, the song was sung, there would be no continuation. I said it was just a series of suicides. A plant is not equipment, it is people. They have worked here for generations. I knew the blower in the seventh generation! Imagine, his great-great-grandfathers worked here from the middle of the 19th century. For people like him, simply the incentive to live was gone.

By all accounts, the Rostovskys acted closely with the city administration. Pruzhinin ("Spring") and Ustinovsky were officially assistants to the mayor; they had offices in the administration building. Mayor Khasainov stayed in power for almost 15 years, gaining control over many enterprises of the city during this time. In 2009, in Vyshny Volochok, the opposition movement “New City” was organized to the mayor and his team. The authorities managed to change, but not for long. Before leaving, Khasainov passed through the local assembly a law limiting the term of office of the head of the city to two years. In 2011, Aleksey Pantyushkin, a friend of Khasainov, became mayor. The term of office was again extended to four years, but the tragic incident did not allow them to be fulfilled to the end. In the early morning of July 19 of this year, Alexei Pantyushkin died of heart failure in a suite at a five-star hotel in Turkey. His death was reported by a girl who happened to be with him at that early time in the same issue. However, mentions of her in the Russian press hardly leaked out. Together with the mayor, another 12 city officials of different levels and gender were vacationing in a five-star hotel - all without families. What money was used to organize the trip remains unknown. Pantyushkin was buried on the city's Walk of Fame. Vyshny Volochek is waiting for new elections.

Evgeny Stupkin

local historian, former deputy of the Vyshnevolotsk City Duma,
one of the founders of the movement
"New town"

In our country, almost 70 percent of the city's enterprises were closed or destroyed with the help of Khasainov. He acted in line with the same policy that was in Tver and in Moscow, just different in size. The road was now being built as a district road for the federal highway - it turned out that almost half of the land on which it passed belongs to Khasainov. But he didn't invent anything. Former governor Zelenin bought up all the best land in the Tver region on the cheap.

Vyshny Volochek was an industrial center - the second most important city in the Tver region. All these famous factories of ours went under the knife. Not only "Red May". For example, the plant of tanning extracts - there are less than a dozen of them in all of Russia - produced unique, irreplaceable products. Today, even the ruins of it are gone - and we buy the same products, albeit of inferior quality and much more expensive, abroad. The famous Zelenogorsk plant of enzyme preparations is a unique plant, unique developments. Bankrupt.

They built a wonderful brick factory - they built it with state money, they immediately went bankrupt, and the same company that built it bought it already 10 times cheaper, do you understand? That is, the scheme for transferring budget money to a private pocket has been worked out clearly.

We have nothing left now. Well, the only thing - the forest ... - the timber processing plant is alive, the timber industry is alive. There are normal men as directors. Most of the forestry enterprises in the country today only know what to cut down and immediately sell round timber. Our timber industry and timber processing plant do not sell round timber at all - all raw materials are processed. And most of them just carry round timber.

Until now, half of Vyshny Volochok, almost the entire infrastructure of the city, all the city's life support systems are in private hands, that is, controlled by Khasainov and his accomplices. Water, gas, light, heat, everything. Even if there is no money, people will still pay for it. And the tariffs for these services are growing rapidly. This is not even rabid capitalism, this is something else. For example, earlier it was possible to distinguish - this is a bandit, this is an official. Today, these two concepts have merged so much that they have become one. Unified system, rigid from top to bottom, vertical, strong, strong, good. How to destroy it, I, for example, have no idea.

Khasainov has been out of power for six years, but if a person owns half of the city, how can the city authorities not contact him? Naturally, they reckon with him. Vyshny Volochek is not something unique, this is how the system works throughout Russia.

To what extent it came to - they built a plant with state money, they immediately went bankrupt, and the same company that built it bought it already 10 times cheaper, do you understand?

Khasainov ruled for almost 15 years. One of those who dropped it was me. First, we gathered 70% of our Duma, where there were no lackeys, and then they threw him off. But, as they say, what they fought for, they ran into it. Babushkin led the fight against Khasainov, he later expressed himself somehow that the operation to overthrow Khasainov was his best business project. In general, it happened. A relative of Babushkin became the mayor, they quickly agreed with Khasainov's team and divided the spheres of influence. In general, all of us were thrown - the whole team that was able to remove Khasainov from the mayor, and by and large, and the whole city - all its residents, 80% of whom voted for the change of power. I left "politics" - I am again engaged in my favorite study of local lore, finishing the book "Vyshnevolotskaya Pushkiniana" - almost two dozen of Pushkin's friends and acquaintances lived in our area, can you imagine ?!

Part was the city and the region. Now let's look at two museums of Vyshny Volochok. This is a local history museum that introduces the past of the city, its unique canals and iconic people, and a real Glass Fairy Tale or Colored Dream - a glass museum of the former Krasny May factory, several times even making ruby ​​glass for the stars of the Kremlin towers on a government order.

1. Glass production near Vyshny Volochok appeared in the second half of the 19th century, when a local merchant bought out a chemical plant and founded on its basis the manufacture of tableware, lampshades and kerosene lamps

2. A little later, the production of colored glass appears, when an experienced glassmaker who knows the secret of technology came to the plant

3. The plant's products received high awards at pre-revolutionary exhibitions

8. And the little animals, ahah, look what they are!

11. After the revolution, the plant was nationalized, renamed into "Red May", expanded and modernized production. Lamp glass, window glass, dishes, lamps for the subway - all this was done here. High-quality colored products, which, as in tsarist times, occupied high places at international exhibitions, were nicknamed the "Russian miracle"

12. In the 1940s and 1970s, the plant carried out perhaps the most important task in its history - a government order for the production of ruby ​​glass for the Kremlin stars. Here are its pieces

Having visited this museum, I was already dreaming about how I would get into production and make a report, but not destiny. In 2001, the Krasny Mai glass factory was closed. Let's face it, a huge era has gone and a whole page has been torn out from a book on the history of our country, but the memory remains. For the sake of this museum, in order to visit here again, I would return to Vyshny in the summer on a Mosturflot cruise or in the winter as part of bus tours, the so-called "winter cruises" of this company.
It would seem that there has been no plant for almost 17 years, but the sediment from this fact still remained inside.

13. And this is the Vyshny Volochok Museum of Local Lore. Honestly, I don’t really like these, but I didn’t regret that I visited Vyshnevolotsky. It is already over 80 years old, but the exhibitions do not emit a layer of museum dust and there is no need to carry a pillow here for sleeping out of boredom. Not so long ago, everything was also reconstructed here.

Local guides are real professionals in their field, enthusiasts, ready to spend hours talking about every detail, about each exhibit as a personal dear to them and an old friend. No memorized phrases from guidebooks, no "tell, but quickly finish." So I highly recommend the museum to everyone!

14. In the Petrovsky Hall, you can not only learn about the activities of the tsar, who made the Vyshnevolotsk waterway truly navigable (thereby connecting the Baltic and the Caspian Sea and opening up many new opportunities for the development of Russia with the help of Vyshny Volochek), but also see the cannons raised from the bottom of the canals , kernels, hooks - witnesses of that era

17. The Dutch, who built canals for Peter in Vyshny Volochek, messed up. They are used to working with the sea and did not take into account the peculiarities of our area. In the summer, the lakes and rivers became shallow, the canals were dehydrated, traffic along the canals got up and famine set in in the cities.

The Novgorod merchant M.I.Serdyukov undertook to correct the situation and improve the waterway. He, a self-taught hydraulic engineer, devoted a third of a century to the water system of Vyshny Volochek. Locks, beyshlots, Tsninsky Canal, reservoir - all these are the results of his labors.

18. Model of Tsninsky lock, built by Serdyukov

19. Plan of hydraulic structures in Vyshny Volochyok presented by Serdyukov to Emperor Peter

20. And a modern map.
After visiting the museum, I wanted to visit all the buildings in the summer, including those almost destroyed by time and man, see everything personally and get to know in more detail the waterway, which was once very important for Russia.

21. Model of the Vyshny Volochek of the times of Peter. Now, if museums have layouts, that's very cool)

22. Look, what a handsome man!
The frigate "Pallada". Its first captain was Nakhimov. In the future, the frigate visited many voyages, including in Japan. With the outbreak of the Crimean War, due to fear of capture by the British, it was flooded.
Over the years, Vyshnevolotsk and Tver nobles served on it

23. The Vyshny Volochok canals were the most important freight routes. Here is a mock-up of a cargo barge, made according to a 19th century blueprint. How do you like the fact that the barge lifted up to 130 tons of cargo? I didn't believe it at first)

In Vyshny, in connection with the transition from climbing to rafting, the vessels were re-equipped. The rudders and masts were removed, platforms were set up, on which people stood, driving 4 huge oars - potes. A pilot and 10 workers were put on each barge

24. Do you remember in the first part there was a chapel on the site of the Kazan Cathedral of the 18th century, where the decree of Catherine, who granted Vyshny Volochok the status of a city, was read? This is how this cathedral was blown up in the 1930s.