This was published 13 years ago
Slow boat in Russia
Margaret Turton watches the passage of history on a Stalin-inspired canal from St Petersburg to Moscow.
Old Russia ... the Viking Surkov passes the wooden buildings of Kizhi Island.
People have always dreamed of the prospect of sailing to faraway places. From his Summer Palace in St Petersburg, Tsar Peter the Great imagined the benefits of a waterway system linking rivers and lakes to provide direct passage to Moscow.
Peter had already dug canals and drained marshlands at the mouth of the Neva River to create his sparkling capital, St Petersburg. Still absorbed in the intricacies of hydro technology, he turned his attention to the Summer Palace, planning water reservoirs and distribution sluices, grand fountains, cascades and a canal conveying water through parklands to the Gulf of Finland without the use of a single pump. Extraordinary, really, for the early 1700s.
Since then, everybody wanted a reliable navigable route between St Petersburg and Moscow. But nothing of any permanence was achieved until Josef Stalin - worrying about water shortages - devised his Great Volga Plan. This involved constructing a new canal between Moscow and the Volga River and improving existing waterways to the Baltic Sea.
It would be nice to say that Stalin's project benefited the citizens of Russia, but it did not. His was a brutal era - 700 towns and villages were flooded, their inhabitants dispatched to unknown destinations.
By way of contrast, our journey from St Petersburg begins with champagne bubbles and ends beneath candy-striped cupolas in Moscow's Red Square. On the way we visit old rural Russia, sites that predate Tsarist times and mediaeval town squares that became parade grounds in the Soviet era.
We set off on the Neva River on Viking Surkov - a recently refurbished 128-metre luxury river cruiser that comfortably accommodates 210 passengers - and glide by Shlisselburg Fortress, which dominates access to Lake Ladoga.
The lake and the fortress are exquisite in the softness of a northern twilight. But the atmosphere turns soupy when we learn that what began as a fort built by Prince Yury of Moscow became a prison for an infant emperor who died there at the hands of his jailers in 1764.
The young Ivan VI was not Shlisselburg's only distinguished prisoner. Through the centuries, its dungeons were home to unruly aristocrats, high-ranking citizens and political detainees, including Vladimir Lenin's brother.
Lake Ladoga is Europe's largest freshwater lake. Though it is ice-free for barely six months of the year, the canals on its southern shore can accommodate vessels sailing to and from St Petersburg. We cross the lake and wake up on the Svir River to disembark at the village of Verkhnie Mandrogi, where rustic dachas (wooden houses) present the ultimate Russian rural scene.
What happens when 200 Westerners drop in and immediately double the permanent population? Well, Verkhnie Mandrogi is no ordinary village. It was burnt to the ground in World War II and rebuilt in 1997, specifically for the benefit of river passengers and stressed-out city-dwelling Russians in need of immersion in the simple ways of pre-revolutionary life.
The sound of a violin provokes a flood of tears at a table filled with glowing Russians, eyes blinking with pleasure. That or the effects of the Museum of Vodka - 2740 varieties, and tastings, included in the entrance fee.
It may sound a little stagey but everybody loves Verkhnie Mandrogi with its dachas sitting sweetly in undisciplined gardens, craft workshops and open-air stoves cooking blinis.
Our next stop is Europe's second-largest freshwater lake. Lake Onega has 1600 islands, among them Kizhi, where UNESCO World Heritage-listed wooden buildings - all of them silvered through weathering and age - are assembled in an open-air museum. The main drawcard is the multi-domed churches of great antiquity. This early pagan site is credited with magical powers and, be it for the churches or the magic, some passengers are up at dawn, waiting for Kizhi to swing into view.
We disembark, gather ourselves into little groups and walk in the direction of the churches. They don't disappoint. Their astonishing domes appear to float in this airy expanse of meadow encircled by lake and, magic or no magic, Kizhi Island has a mystical strangeness about it.
Back on board we return to reality and a lunch of pelmeni (tortellini-like dumplings), a favourite of Tsar Peter the Great. By evening we are passing through the first of the ship locks of the Volga-Baltic Waterway. They raise our vessel higher and higher until, at daybreak, we float onto the White Lake, which once formed part of the Tsar's fishing grounds. These days an ecology centre monitors the effects of disruption to the lake's natural currents, one of the many downsides of Stalin's Great Volga Plan.
At Goritsy, passengers step ashore for a 10-minute bus ride to the fortified Monastery of St Cyril, founded by a Moscow monk in the 14th century. Four centuries later it controlled 400 villages, 20,000 serfs and a salt mine.
We sense this influence and power as we meander through the monastery, although its impact plummets at the Water Gate on the edge of the White Lake when we mingle with scantily clad locals, who now come here to swim.
Soon we'll leave the lake and sail across Rybinsk Reservoir. At 4500 square kilometres, it's more of a small sea formed by damming the Sheksna and Volga rivers to deepen these waterways for summer navigation.
Previously, a voyage from St Petersburg took up to three months as rivers dried up and ropes pulled ships from lock to lock. We have reached this spot in just a few days. Stalin's Great Volga Plan would seem superbly practical were it not for the human displacement and general destruction.
I'm lolling on a deckchair watching the steady stream of river traffic when the first flooded monument pokes above the waters, adding a whole new dimension to the scene.
Next stop; the ancient trading port, Yaroslavl, founded on the Volga in the 11th century by Yaroslav the Wise, a prince from Kiev, who is said to have killed a bear with his bare hands. In a few days we will see his armour in Moscow's Kremlin.
Today Yaroslavl is a hefty slice of old and new Russia. There are ludicrously pretty churches with brightly coloured domes, fine collections of mediaeval frescoes, iconostases (walls of icons), defensive towers, a governor's palace and Soviet-era apartments and parade grounds, where young fathers push new babies in the latest-model prams.
More jewel-like churches dot the river banks as we glide along the Volga at a leisurely rate. More drowned churches, too. We wonder what the river will serve up next. Then we reach Uglich, the prettiest - and darkest - place of all.
The sapphire-blue domes of the Church of St Dmitry on the Blood shine in defiance of the murder, hereabouts, of Ivan the Terrible's youngest son.
Our stony-faced guide broadcasts the blood-curdling tale of nine-year-old Dmitry's demise and the mayhem that immediately followed - witnesses' tongues were cut out and even the church bell was exiled to Siberia.
And so the locks of Stalin's Moscow Canal carry us on to the ancient capital. Approaching the Northern River Terminal we gain a strong impression of Stalin's monumental style. Dark glamour hovers over this neo-classical edifice, built in 1937 to mark the Moscow Canal's completion. But the building's power to intimidate has faded and, like Stalin's reputation, it's pretty knocked about.
Here, now, in Moscow, we're ready to take on the new Russia. We're also prepared for old Moscow and the era when Ivan the Terrible was Russia's first Tsar and his city was one of the largest in the world.
Margaret Turton travelled courtesy of Scandinavian Airlines and Viking River Cruises.
FAST FACTS
Getting there
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has a fare to St Petersburg or Moscow for about $2692 low-season return from Melbourne and Sydney including tax. This entails a flight with Thai Airways to Bangkok (about 9hr) and then with SAS to Copenhagen (12hr) where you change for Moscow or St Petersburg (2hr). Australians require a visa for a stay of up to 30 days.
Cruising there
Viking River Cruises's 13-day Waterways of the Czars cruise from St Petersburg to Moscow costs from $3899 a person (saving $2000) if booked and paid in full by February 28. The cruise includes three days each in St Petersburg and Moscow. Phone 1800 829 138, see vikingrivercruises.com.au.
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