#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Today this town is the administrative center of the Dzerzhinsk district of the Kaluga region, its population does not exceed 16 thousand people.
In 1929 of the last century Kondrovo became a workers’ settlement, and in 1938 Kondrovo and Troitskoye were united into one settlement and assigned the status of a city. It is interesting that in 2005 Kondrovo took the second place in landscaping among all cities in Russia, the population of which does not exceed one hundred thousand people. Despite the fact that improvement of the territory began here just in the 60s of the last century. Suspension bridges appeared across the Shanya river, asphalt pavement on the main roads, construction of five-story residential buildings, schools and a kindergarten began.
In modern Kondrovo, there are 107 names of streets, avenues, squares, boulevards, highways and alleys. The toponymy of local streets reflects the entire Russian history. In this remote place, as in other cities of the country, there is still Lenin, Krupskaya, Sverdlov, Kirov streets, as well as Rabochaya, Fabrichnaya, Octyabrskaya, Sovetskaya and Chapayeva.
After the Great Patriotic War, Svoboda avenue, Marshall Zhukov and other famous people streets appeared in Kondrovo. And in the middle of the last century, the Norilskaya toponym was added to them. There are only ten buildings there, mostly private houses.
The population of Kondrovo is gradually decreasing. But tourists love to come to those places, rich in historical, architectural and archaeological monuments – the monastery of St. Tikhon’s Hermitage, the temple in honor of the Savior Not Made by Hands, the temple in honor of the Holy Life-Giving Trinity, the estate of the Goncharovs – the parents of Alexander Pushkin’s wife, local history, ecological, museums and the one of the Troitskoye paper mill history and others.
By the way, at the entrance to the Dzerzhinsk district you can see an unusual monument – a roll of paper with the names of the three largest settlements. The village of Lev Tolstoy, whose works took a lot of paper. The village of Polotnyany Zavod, where Pushkin visited his parents-in-law several times – he also spent much paper. And the third one is Kondrovo, where the paper mill is located, which is the city-forming enterprise today.
What else is the regional center famous for, where Norilskaya street is registered? Since 1998, Kondrovo has become the venue for the annual bard song festival. In addition, a modern motorcycle track, the second largest in Europe, runs across the city outskirts.
Text: Elena Popova, Photo: open sources
