Russian
The Volga Corner's Secrets.
Mounds, steep slopes and crests of hills
Are pressed in the unwelcome row,
Hitherto, they keep in memory
Their rigorous epics...
D.N. Sadovnikov.
The Zhiguli' Pearl
The village Shiryaevo can be rightfully considered to be the Zhiguli's pearl. It is located in the valley of the Shiryaevo's Ravine. This is the largest valley within the region of Samarskaya Luka (the Volga's bend). Its length is 35 kilometres and width near Shiryaevo is about 3 km. Along both sides of the ravine two crests of hills are sloping down to the Volga, they are: Popov's and Monastery's Hills cut with pits and hollows and overgrown with forests. The following side branches of the Shiryaevo's Ravine are well known all around: Hmelevoy, Kochkarny, Praselsky, Krestyansky, Medvezhy. To move further from the Volga, the ravines' slopes are higher.
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The Resources Of The Volzhskaya Land
Within 15 km from Shiryaevo along the ravine the powdered dolomite is quarried.
There is a formation of gypsum, lying as a stock on 15 meters depth in one of the Shiryaevo's Ravine branch namely the Praselsky Ravine. Closer to the slopes' basement the white gypsum transforms into the blue anhydrite known as " Zhiguli's marble."
Evidently, all the items in this area and their names are associated with cuts of the ravines. Shiryaevo was named after a ravine and so were some other natural items around it. Shiryaevo is a centre of the Zhiguli's mining industry. Before the revolution mining in Shiryaevo was very primitive.
Nowadays the following minerals are quarried in the open-cut mines: quarrystone, dolomite, different grades of limestone, like white flint, blue flint, nodular flint etc. The local plants produce lime and alabaster.
The Linden meadow possesses a limestone stratum called "pink row"" as it features pink colour and its structure looks like marble.
The surface-tooled stones from Shiryaevo are used for bridge piers and other road constructions.
The plants products are delivered far up and down the Volga. In summer, the Shiryaevo's plants are always provided with flat-bottomed boats and barges that are loaded with stones and lime to be sent to different cities.
During spring's flood the water from the Volga comes through erik (a shallow channel) into the village that makes barge loading much easier. Shiryaevo has a reputation for the diversified economy. Here they grow cereal, industrial and vegetable crops, develop cattle-breeding and apiculture.
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Step Into The Past
In the distant past, as it is seen from the description of settlements in 1647, Shiryaevo was known under the name for the Shiryaevo's Ravine and it belonged to a landlord Filatov. At that time 167 peasants being "poor landless and dependant peasants" lived in the village with their families, while some of them had farm-hands and idle people in their households.
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Abode Of The Russian Artists' Brush
The Great Russian painter Repin I.E. stayed in Shiryaevo during his trip along the Volga. Living in Shiryaevo Repin collected a lot of stuff for his famous picture "Barge Haulers on the Volga". Repin worked with this picture from 1870 until 1873. At that time being unfinished, the picture was shown at several exhibitions and its demonstration at the academic exhibition caused hot disputes in the art world and literature.
The loghouse where Repin lived in Shiryaevo was built in the second half of the XIX century.
The museums keep a lot of drawings, sketches and studies painted by Repin in Shiryaevo. Here he found the most interesting and expressive character of barge hauler Kalich by name, who was proclaimed "a peak of the barge haulers epopee".
During that summer Repin painted "Storm on the Volga".
In Shiryaevo the painter Vasilyev F.A. worked together with Repin. Summer of 1870 on the Volga banks was very fruitful for him. He painted "Barges on the Volga", " The Volga's Landscape" and a series of excellent studies reflecting beauty and freshness of the Volga's nature.
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Motherland Of The Poet From Shiryaevo
Shiryaevo is motherland of Alexander Vasiluevich Abramov who was a poet. He was born in the peasant's family in 1887. His childhood spent among the Zhiguli mountains; early acquaintance with loaders and barge haulers' labour had imprinted on the poet's works. Especially his imagination of a poet was captivated by multiple legends and traditions on Razin's period and treasures buried in the Zhiguli mountains. His works are penetrated with element-rebellious and epic-song motives. Poet from Shiryaevo behaves himself like a poet of the vigorous freemen filled with romanticism of the brewing freedom of the Volga's poverty, its elemental rebellion against rich and wealthy people. The house where the poet was born and lived is being still saved. It is not big, one-story building with a memorial board on the front surface.
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The Tourists Favourite Place
Shiryaevo is the tourists' favourite place for rest. The tourists' attention is attracted by a narrow white ribbon encircling green slopes of the Zyiguli mountains. These are open-cut mines, where the limestone is quarried. Right now only a narrow strip near the bottom of the mountains is touched by the man's hand. Not all the rest mountains are touched yet and they are covered with green virgin forests up to the tops.
On the background of the green mountains, everybody can see a raised head, a bent neck and a back with two hills- all these items remind a camel frozen in a position of the resting animal. The foreign tourists coming to the bank of the Volga are visiting repin's museum.
The Shiryaevo's stetches of water,
Camel's hill, Abandoned mines,
Narrow mountain paths
Unbounded width of the Zhiguli
All this is my Motherland
And the Volga's land!
Shiryaevo! This is the Volga's village!
This is the abode of the Russian artists brush.
It was born by God's wishing,
Like Motherland of the Russian barge haulers!
V.Stepanov
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