Away from keyboard #5. Cossack stanitsa Veshenskaya - a trip into original Russia!

Hello my dear friends and visitors of my blog (who will become my friends very soon, as I hope ^_^)!

Today I’d like to leave the glorious city of Rostov-on-Don and to visit one of the most beautiful villages on the shores of the same river. It’s the village or ‘stanitsa’ (that’s how we call it in Russian) of Veshenskaya.

There are several versions of how the name of the village was formed. The most common of them says that the name of stanitsa ‘Veshenskaya’ came from the word «milestone», that means a pole, sometimes with a badge, used as an early warning of invaders approaching. In Russia a milestone was often used to show travelers the way in the wilderness or help to people to find a crossing over an icy river.

The inscription on the pillar is the name of the village. Near you can see the words written by Mikhail Sholokhov:
'Sweet, bright Homeland! All our boundless love of sons is for you. All our thoughts are with you.'

This is a very old settlement. Officially the first date that this Cossack city milestone is mentioned is the year 1672. Through this village has passed all the centuries-old history of Russia. The Don Cossacks of this stanitsa participated in the rebellions of Razin and Bulavin as well as the rebellion known as the 'agreement of Pugachev' and the defeat of the French in the year 1812.

On the mound next to the village you can see the monument – it’s the steppe eagle with it's wings spread out wide and lettering ‘M.A. Sholokhov’ underneath in green. The monument was erected in 1983. It was created by a sculptor called Mozhaev.

Stanitsa Veshenskaya is really only a small village but became famous all over the world thanks to the novel ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ for which its author Mikhail Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. He described the beauty of the Don's nature, traditions and the life of the Don Cossacks in this book. It’s the reason why there are lot of monuments devoted to the writer and heroes of his novel in the village.

There is the memorial sign ‘To the Cossacks of the quiet Don’.

The village square has a bronze bust of Sholokhov made by the sculptor Novikov and the architect Klimau. It was established on the 23rd of may 1981.

There is the museum of the writer Mikhail Sholokhov, it is where he lived and worked. It is on a very picturesque place which is right on the shore of the Don.

The uniqueness of the museum lies in the fact that all the contents are the very same things used by Sholokhov on a daily basis as well as those things connected with his creative work (personal belongings, manuscripts, letters, the house in which he lived, the nature, the farm and the village, depicted in his works).

The collection of the Museum objects consists almost entirely of the original things that belonged to the writer and his family.

The great writer and his wife are buried in the village, anyone can visit their graves.

The monument of the main characters of Gregory and Aksinya are on the shores of the river. It was made by sculptor Mozhaev.

The weight of the bronze monument is 12 tons and is an impressive 6.5 meters tall. It is a very beautiful sculpture, it has a lot of life, passion and pride in it.

It seems that the prototype for the sculptor's work was an illustration to the first edition of the novel (1935), executed by a talented artist and sculptor Sergei Korolkov.

The conducted international literary-folklore festival ‘Sholokhov's spring’ is held in the Veshenskaya every year on the last weekend of May.

The first festival was held on May 24 in the year 1985 on the 80th anniversary of Sholokhov birth.

More than 100 thousand people from all over the world come to the ‘Sholokhov’s spring’ every year.

The ‘Sholokhov’s spring’ has its own traditions: there are holidays for children in the square, there are meetings with writers and poets in the library, processions of folklore groups in traditional costumes with songs, local fairs with products of traditional craftsmen.

The local Cossacks also offer guests a taste of the delicacies of the region, to sing and dance and to see concerts and a fireworks display.

During this festival the local men compete in a horse race and also an event where grape vines are cut with a sabre to show the skills of a warrior.

In addition the village can boast of its Church of Michael the Archangel, monuments to Lenin and Gagarin, as well as the fact that in the years of the Civil war Veshenskaya was the center of the upper-Donskoy rebellion against the Bolsheviks.

Now Veshenskaya is one of the most beautiful settlements on the river Don. Unique monuments of nature are within its territory. For example there is ‘The Veshenskaya oak tree’ – the age of this oak-giant is more than 400 years and the circumference of the trunk is 7.6 m. A unique feature of one the villages in the area is a natural spring bringing clean fresh water to the people.

Here you can see many different kinds of rare plants and animals. Unique tulips cover the spring carpet steppe and here you can find the Russian Desman, a small animal that has lived in this region since the time of the dinosaurs.

You also might enjoy the sandy beaches, the rich healing aroma of the pine forests, good fishing and hunting. It is also a great place to collect medicinal herbs and mushrooms.

I hope you enjoyed this trip in the middle of original Russia! Please upvote or resteem this post so I would know that you liked it! And of course I will be happy to read your comments! Have a nice day! :)

Away from keyboard #4. Gorky Park. In the very middle of Rostov-on-Don