- Vladimirka
The Vladimir Highway (Russian: Владимирский тракт), familiarly known as the "Vladimirka" (Владимирка), was a road leading east from
Moscow toVladimir andNizhny Novgorod . Its length was about 190 kilometers.The road has been mentioned in documents since the
Middle Ages , when it connected the political capital ofMuscovy with the ancestral seat of the Grand Dukes ofVladimir-Suzdal . It was by this road that the Muscovite merchants travelled to theMakariev Fair . In connection with the ceremonial transfer of theTheotokos of Vladimir from Vladimir to Moscow in 1395, one Russian chronicler referred to the route as "the greatest of roads".The Vladimir Highway was renovated in the mid 18th-century when it became the westernmost section of the
Great Siberian Road linkingSiberia to Europe. There were a number of post stations with a ready supply of fresh horses. If one travelled post, it was possible to get from Moscow to Vladimir in less than 24 hours.Since Siberia was a traditional place of exile, the "Vladimirka" witnessed crowds of prisoners in shackles marching from Moscow to the
katorga . It is in connection with the penal function that the road figures in the works ofAlexander Herzen ,Nikolay Nekrasov , andFyodor Dostoevsky (e.g., "Crime and Punishment "). As a result, a wealth of bitter associations accrued to it over the course of the 19th century; they are embodied inIsaak Levitan 's eponymous painting (1892), representing the "Vladimirka" as a "lonely track going on into the empty distance enlivened only by a church and the vast lowering sky". [Quoted from: Murrell, Kathleen Berton. "Discovering the Moscow Countryside". I.B. Tauris, 2001. ISBN 1860646735. Page 172.]After the Russian Revolution, the
Bolsheviks were keen to get rid of the notorious name, rebranding the Moscow section of the road asShosse Entuziastov ("Enthusiasts' Highway"). The modernized Soviet highway became known as the Volga Motorway.References
* [http://www.rustrana.ru/article.php?nid=22904 History of the Volga Highway]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
