The far north has always been a magnet for pioneers and social misfits — a place where those who cannot or choose not to conform can find the freedom to make their own rules. In Canada it was the Yukon; in European Russia it was the Lake District midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The country along the Sheksna and Kovzha rivers, low lying and covered with patchy forest of birch, pine and spruce, is remarkably like that along the Yukon River. Standing on the deck of the riverboat Kirov and looking across Lake Siverskoye I could easily have been on the MV Klondike looking across Lake Laberge. But the illusion ends as we round a bend and cruise past the fortified walls and towering spires of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery.
Today the Monastery is the official “State Museum Reserve of History, Architecture and Art” — the cultural centre of the town of Kirilov. But back in the 1300s, long before the first boats came, Lake Siverskoye was surrounded by a wilderness of dense forest, about as far from the cities and bureaucracy of Russia as it was possible to get. And it was in 1397 that a disenchanted Reverend Kirill resigned from a prestigious hierarchical position at Moscow’s Simon Monastery and traveled north in search of personal freedom. Accompanied by another monk by the name of Ferapont, he chose a spot on the shores of Lake Siverskoye to set up a small cloister. But rather than dropping out of sight Kirill gained new respect for his asceticism and, as his popularity and spiritual authority grew, so too did his wilderness retreat. Many others followed the spiritual trail blazed by Kirill and Ferapont and their tiny cloister on Siverskoye Lake was destined to become one of the largest and most influential religious centres in all of Russia.
We wave to a group of kids playing beside one of the fortified towers and a few minutes later our ship is again surrounded by wilderness. The narrow, 40 km stretch of river between Siverskoye and Beloye (White) lakes is probably much as it was 600 years ago when Kirill was searching for a spot to build his retreat. Except for a few pioneers’ houses where the trees have been cleared to make room for a garden the banks of the river are covered with dense forest. About midway between the two lakes the tiny settlement of Goritsy, population 60, boasts a small nunnery with an impressive multi-domed cathedral, a few souvenir kiosks, and a dock where we are met by local guide Gaylina for an overland trip back to the Monastery.
“This is still a frontier region of Russia,” Gaylina explains as we bounce along the dirt track road back to Kirilov. “People here still have to protect their gardens from deer and their livestock from wolves and bears. The summers are short but the days are long and crops grow quickly.”
In the Canadian north we call it the “midnight sun.” In Russia they call their long summer days “white nights” and, as we drive past snug hand-hewn log cabins with flourishing gardens, and huge stacks of firewood anticipating the return of winter I am again reminded of the Yukon.
During the seven-kilometre drive from Goritsy to Kirilov, Gaylina gives us some background on the role of monasteries in Russia’s north. “The success of remote sacred retreats like Kirillo-Belozersky was not entirely due to the will of God.” she explains. “The political and economic reasons are even more important. Once a monastery was established it became a stronghold of both church and state. Pioneer farmers and merchants followed the monks. They established thriving feudal societies and brought agriculture and commerce to previously undeveloped lands. This was encouraged and supported by the Grand Princes of Moscow State and later by the Czars of Russia who saw the new settlements as an extension of their power into the frontier. By the mid 17 th century 20,000 peasants lived in homesteads clustered around the spot where Kirill dug his first earth-house retreat on the shores of Siverskoye Lake.”
Today the town of Kirilov has a population of about 8,000 but it still has the feel of a frontier settlement. The buildings are all low, many are made of logs, and beyond the outer limits of the town the land is still covered with virgin forest. Even its layout, with the monastery at its centre and the houses of residents draped around its fortified walls, is a relic of the town’s feudal origins.
For two centuries after it was founded Kirill’s cloister, surrounded only by a wooden fence, had no proper fortifications. But in the beginning of the 16 th century, with wars raging in other parts of Russia, the churches and other buildings of the Assumption and Ivan Monasteries were enclosed by an 1,100-metre defensive wall. The “Old Town” within this first wall withstood a six-year siege by Polish and Swedish armies. But the heroic defense came at a terrible cost and when the siege ended in 1619 the czar ordered the construction of a new and more powerful defensive line. It took 30 years to build the present fortified walls around the “New Town”, which surrounds the old defenses and doubles the original size of the Kirillow-Belozersky Monastery. The new walls, more than 10 metres high and seven metres thick, have three levels of loop-holes for the defending marksmen, and a lower gallery used to house the garrison and store ammunition. For its time Kirillo-Belozersky was one of the most formidable fortresses in Russia. But not all the residents were there out of choice. During the reign of Ivan IV, better known as “The Terrible”, the monastery was both a retreat and a prison, a convenient place for the czar to dump his opponents into exile.
We enter New Town through the 17 th century Kazan Tower, one of only two towers that provide access to the monastery. The other four towers that loom above the wall are blank, making them less vulnerable to enemy attack. A short walk across the inner stockade takes us to the 16 th century Holy Gate, through the inner defensive wall, and into the “Old Town” where the Assumption Cathedral and a cluster of other chapels and churches stand at the centre of the old monastery. Each immaculate white building is topped by a brilliant green dome and gold cross. Although most of them have been incorporated into the new history museum, part of the complex is once again a working monastery where a few monks carry on the tradition begun by Kirill 600 years ago. From an open doorway their melodic chanting casts an eerie spell through the corridors of a church hung with the religious icons from another era.
After following Gaylina through room after room stuffed with centuries-old icons, priceless hand-scripted manuscripts and the tools and trinkets of past ages my mind is as cluttered as some of the displays. But for scholars of Russian history the Kirillo-Belozersky Museum is a treasure trove of original material going back more than six centuries. Its fortified walls, in spite of their remote location, or perhaps because of it, have provided a safe haven for generations of intellectual pioneers and for the art and wisdom of Russia’s past.
