Velikii Ustiug

a city in Vologda Oblast, RSFSR. Situated on the left bank of the Sukhona River across from the point of confluence of the lug River, 68 km southwest of the Kotlas railroad junction. Population, 36,000 (1970). The city’s largest enterprise is a bristle and brush factory. A shipbuilding and ship-repair plant produces passenger and freight ships and metal barges. The city also has a mechanical repair plant and a foundry and machine plant; leather and haberdashery, accordion, garment, and furniture factories; and the Severnaia Chern’ factory. There is food and condiments industry (a butter-producing plant, a brewery, a distillery, a meat-packing plant, and others). There is a school of river navigation, a medical college, a teachers’ college, a motor-vehicle and highway technicum, and a sovkhoz-technicum. There is a museum of local lore.

Velikii Ustiug was first mentioned in the chronicles for the year 1207. It was part of the domain of the Vladimir-Suzdal’ Principality. Situated at the junction of the most important trade routes, Velikii Ustiug became a great trade and industrial center in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th century, owing to the shift of Russian foreign trade to the Baltic Sea, Velikii Ustiug lost its importance. From 1796 it was a district city of Vologda Province. Soviet power was permanently established in June 1918. Velikii Ustiug is the birthplace of great Russian explorers S. I. Dezhnev, E. P. Khabarov, and V. V. Atlasov.

Architectural monuments of Velikii Ustiug include the Church of the Ascension (1648) in the “decorative architecture” style; four-pillar and two-pillar cubic cathedrals with one or five domes (cathedrals in the complexes of the Mikhailo-Arkhangel’skii and Troitsa-Gledenskii monasteries, both built in the 17th century; the Uspenskii [1619] and Prokop’evskii cathedrals [1668]; the Spaso-Preobrazhensk Summer Church [1689-96]; and the Dmitrii Solunskii Church [1700-08]); tiered churches (the Spaso-Preobrazhensk Winter Church [1725-30], the Sergii Radonezhskii Church [1739-47], and the Georgiev Summer Church [1735-38]); a number of baroque buildings (formerly the Shilov and Zakharov homes); and some classical buildings (residential houses on Sovietskii Prospekt). At present, the construction of residential and public buildings in the city is proceeding mainly on the basis of standardized plans. Since the 17th century Velikii Ustiug has been a crafts center, manufacturing ornamental wrought iron, multicolored enamel, silver filigree, birchbark carvings, binding with tinplate using frostlike patterns (“frost on tinplate”), and chased metal. The art of niello on silver began to develop in the 18th century.